


One step forward, two steps back

by SparrowSquabble



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Eight grew up alongside the others, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Flirting, Fluff, Growing Pains, Hand Jobs, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Light Dirty Talk, Love Confessions, Not that Eight realises, Reader-Insert, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Shapeshifting, Sort Of, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, and of course I can't forget, au where ben isn't dead and five doesn't travel to the future, especially Five, mind-reading, oh and, oh right there's a tag for that, reader and Five are seventeen, reader is Eight, reader is cis female, the smut is all in one chapter so it's easy to skip if you don't want to read it, these two dumbasses suck at emotions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27974096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparrowSquabble/pseuds/SparrowSquabble
Summary: Number Eight has mind-reading powers. During training, she sees something Five most definitely did not want to share.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)/Original Female Character(s), Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy)/Reader
Comments: 31
Kudos: 259





	1. The step forward

You’re exploding from the inside-out.

Fire sears your stomach, the pain so excruciating you can barely breathe. You try to scream, but your throat keeps closing. Inky black tendrils wrap themselves around you, searing your skin like acid.

You struggle to move, but your limbs refuse to respond. A ragged sob escapes you, the coppery taste of blood coating your tongue.

The tendrils squeeze harder and harder until you feel the pop-burst of your capillaries rupturing. You can’t breathe, but it hardly seems to matter. There’s something seeping into you, filling you up, tearing all other thoughts away from you. It’s _hunger_. A gnawing, empty hunger, so intense the pain of it consumes you. The blood leaking over your fingers fades away, and all you can think is—

 _Oh god, no, please_.

—as images of what you _need,_ the stretching and ripping of skin, the snap of tendons, the sharp crack of bones, fill your mind.

 _Move,_ You will every fibre of your being, _move, just move, please, please, I have to get away._

Your bones begin to give way under the pressure of those crushing tentacles, shattering apart, and—

You wake up.

Completely drenched in sweat, trembling violently underneath your blankets. Your breath shudders out in rapid stops and starts, catching in your throat. It feels like you can’t get enough air, and it takes you a moment to realise that you’re choking out strangled sobs.

You cry as quietly as possible, trying hard to even out your breathing. It almost works until you remember your dream, and then it starts all over again.

You don’t know how long you stay like that, tears soaking into your pillow, before you’re startled by the flash of a familiar blue light. You slam your eyes shut, holding your breath in an attempt to pretend you’re asleep.

There’s a few beats of silence where all you hear is faint breathing from Five’s direction. “Eight?”

Hearing him say your name makes you choke up. You _know_ he can tell you’re not breathing, but if you start, you won’t be able to hold back the sobs climbing their way up your throat.

“I can tell you’re awake, you know,” He says, and you hear the creak of a floorboard as he steps closer.

You open your eyes and look at him, hoping against hope he won’t notice you’ve been crying. But of course he does, your ever-observant Five.

He seems… thrown off by it. It’s been, oh, how long? Years since he last saw you cry.

“You’ve been crying.” He’s right next to your bed now, looking down at you. One of his hands raises slightly before dropping back to his side, like he’s not sure what to do.

 _No shit,_ you want to say, but your throat is still closed up. You try to take a slow, measured breath instead, and end up hiccupping out another sob.

“D–don’t– don’t look at me,” You force out, voice broken up by your tears. You turn away so he won’t see how pathetic you look with your face puffy and covered in snot.

“It’s fine. I don’t care that you’ve been crying.” Before you can process the words, the bed sinks as a new weight is added beside you.

“W–what—” You start to say, turning back to Five slightly. You cut yourself off when a hand pats you on the head.

You sniff pitifully. “What are you d-doing?” You ask, surprised out of crying.

“I’m cheering you up. Obviously,” He shoots back, but he seems almost flustered. It’s not a look you’re used to seeing on him, and you can’t help but find it endearing. If you hadn’t been crying your eyes out just a moment ago, you’d laugh.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” You grumble, “that’s just condescending.”

He frowns back at you.

“Well, I’m not trying to be condescending. I—” He pauses for a second, trying to find words. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“God, no,” You sigh, already feeling the overwhelming swirl of emotions returning when you think about your nightmare. You give him a wry look from underneath the hand on your head. “Here, dummy,” You say, grabbing his wrist and pulling it aside, “like this.”

His arms hover awkwardly around you as you settle against him, head tucked neatly under his chin. After a moment, one rests across your shoulders, hand on your arm, the other falling back to the bed. Your heart beats a staccato rhythm against your chest, relief flowing through you when he goes along with it. Five has been awfully nice to you lately, and you’re not sure why.

There’s a lull of silence between you for a few moments before a thought occurs to you.

“What were you doing in my room, anyway?” You ask Five.

Maybe you imagine it, but you swear you hear his heart speed up under your ear.

“You looked really sad. Earlier today,” He mutters.

“Aww, you care about me?”

“It’s not my fault you looked so pathetic I had to come check up on you,” Five huffs, but there’s no bite to it. If anything, he sounds embarrassed. “You looked like someone had, I don’t know, doused your book collection in gasoline and burned it.”

You’d thought you were hiding it so well. Five knows how much you treasure your books. Anything you can get your hands on with sentient animals in it holds a soft spot in your heart. It makes your power seem almost normal. Your favourite is Animorphs — the characters transforming, saving the world, being the heroes… and dealing with the fallout. Just like you.

You take a deep breath in through your nose, making a gross sound through all the snot clogging it. In the same moment, you snuggle closer to Five, nuzzling into his collar and inadvertently wiping your nose on his shirt.

“Did you just wipe your nose on me?” He accuses, pulling back, “Ugh, Eight, that’s gross.”

Your arms instantly wrap around him, not ready to relinquish this rare closeness in your vulnerable state. Five’s breath hitches as you squeeze him.

“It was an accidenttt,” You whine, drawing the word out, “don’t leave.”

“Fine,” Five sighs, sounding slightly breathless, “but you better not do it again.”

“I won’t,” You say, voice still holding a childish whine to it. There’s another beat of silence between you, your breaths loud in the complete quiet. Five is so warm against you, and the way he’s been so nice to you lately has a delicate hope blooming in your chest. Naturally, this means you have to say something rude to cancel it out.

“So do you come to my room to watch me sleep like a creep often, or is this a one-time thing?” You ask, the usual snark that undercurrents your conversations with Five returning.

“I wasn’t watching you sleep,” He replies, defensive, “I was just checking up on you. I thought you might be awake.”

“Okay, then do you ‘check up on me’ often?” You say, making air quotes with your fingers at ‘check up on me’.

The arm not wrapped around you comes up to pinch your nose as he says, “Only when you spend all day looking like you’re about to cry. Usually you do a better job keeping it together.” He pulls his hand away quickly, fingertips wet. “Oh, goddammit. Gross. Can you be less of a snot gremlin?”

This gets a giggle out of you. “Serves you right,” You say, bringing a hand up to your mouth as you laugh at the disgusted expression on his face. He frowns back in stern disapproval, but it only lasts a moment before a smile breaks through, a single dimple appearing.

“Can you at least stop making it so difficult to be mad at you?” He says, shaking his head.

“Not my fault I’m so cute,” You quip back, snuggling further into him to prove your point.

“Ha. Ha,” He replies dryly.

“You know it’s true,” You tease.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Eight.”

Now that you’ve calmed down, the exhaustion of crying your eyes out in the middle of the night is washing over you. Slowly, you begin to melt into Five, your muscles relaxing.

“Hey, don’t go to sleep yet,” He says, noticing your weight against him increasing as you relax, “you know I can’t leave with you clinging to me. I’ll just take you with me.”

Five shifts around, starting to move away from you. Your arms clamp tight around him again.

“Wait,” You plead, voice cracking, “don’t leave.”

It’s silent again. The sound of your breathing seems deafeningly loud, and oh god, you know how pathetic you sound. This isn’t you. You’ve never acted this way before, never been quite so vulnerable around—well, anyone. Not since you were kids. Your heart beats loudly in your ears, scared of Five’s reaction. You expect him to tell you to get it together, but instead his other arm comes up, encircling you in a fierce hug.

A small whimper of relief escapes you. You’re so warm. This is the first time anyone has held you in longer than you can remember, and all of a sudden you’re aware of how much you wanted this, how much you needed this. It’s like a dam bursting, warmth and need and love filling you up all at once, and now your eyes are welling up again.

“Eight… please tell me what’s wrong,” Five breathes into the silence, voice softer than you’ve ever heard it.

“Dad wants me to mirror again,” Your voice grows thick around the words.

Five tenses. “People?”

“Y-yeah.”

Five sits up as if he’s about to spring into action, “He can’t!”

“Shh, Five,” You shush him, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. He responds by grabbing your wrist and pulling your hand away.

“You nearly di—” He cuts himself off, “didn’t make it through last time!”

You know what he was going to say. Of course you know. You see it over and over in your nightmares, and in them, there’s no Five nearby to blink you out. It’s not like him to mince words. Not like him to soften them, to try to lessen the sting. But he was with you for most of it, and it affected him too. You see it in the words he leaves unspoken, the lines in-between.

“I was dreaming about it, before you got here,” You admit. “I… dream about it a lot.”

Five is silent, hand rubbing up and down your arm. You can’t tell if it’s an attempt to comfort you or if it’s absentminded, something he hasn’t even noticed he’s doing. Despite the heavy conversation, your heart skips a beat.

“He can’t make you do that again,” Five says, determined. “I won’t let him.”

You let out a shuddering sigh against him. As much as you appreciate the sentiment, you don’t want him doing something stupid for you. The relationship between him and your father has been tense enough lately. “You can’t stop him, Five.”

“Well I can’t just let him kill you, Eight!” His voice is fierce. You sit up, hands planted on either side of him, and meet his eyes. They’re intense, filled with determination and rage, and underneath that the tiniest glimmer of fear.

You stare back at him, face serious. “He won’t. Dad puts us in dangerous situations, but he still looks after us.”

“Does he?”

“He wouldn’t do anything that would definitely kill me.”

“Oh, well, if it’ll only _maybe_ kill you,” Five says, sarcasm lacing his words.

“And what would you do, Five? Ask him not to? Physically fight him? How well do you think that would go?”

He falls silent.

It’s a strained silence, and he’s still tense under you, muscles bunched like he’s ready to fight.

“Maybe Allison could…”

“No. You know how she gets about other people using her power. It’ll be okay. I’ll be careful. As long as I don’t try and take control, I don’t have to let them in. It was only a problem because I—” Your voice cracks, “I let it in.”

“You should never have had to—”

You cut him off, “And you shouldn’t have to teleport until you’re so exhausted you can barely stand.”

“Yeah, well.” And that’s all he can really say, because that’s just the way things are.

“How about this,” You say, voice lilting. “The next time dad tries to make you do that, I’ll fight him.”

Five snorts, shaking his head. “You know he hasn’t asked me to do that in months.”

“I’ll just straight-up deck him in the face, like this.” As you say this you mime punching Five in the cheekbone, lightly bopping his face with your fist. “I’ll give him a real one-two whammy.” You bring your other fist up, gently tapping his other cheek with it.

“Stop it, I’m being serious,” Five complains, but you can see he’s starting to crack.

“Oh, yeah? Well, I’m serious about _this_.” You ruffle his hair, making it stick up in all directions. He hates it when you do this— usually at the start of the day or before missions, right after he’s gotten it to sit flat.

He looks unimpressed, but the crinkling in the corner of his eyes gives him away. “You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, but that’s why you loooove me,” You respond, smug and maybe a little hopeful.

“Debatable.” But you can tell Five is starting to get flustered by the way he’s avoiding eye contact. You love riling him up like this, and it’s made all the better knowing you’re the only one that can do it. His flat response is downright sweet compared to the response any of your siblings would get. It’s just for you, a side of Five only you can bring out, and that thought fills you up with a self-satisfied warmth.

“I’m your favourite,” You say, poking your tongue out at him.

“Ugh, you wish.” It’s hard to tell in the dark, but you’re pretty sure his cheeks are flushing red.

“Say it,” You poke him repeatedly in the side, “say it, say it, say it, sa—”

“Stop– Ah! In your dreams!” He squirms away from you, trying to avoid your fingers.

“Not until you say—” _Thwump!_

Five falls off the bed. Your hand flies up to cover your mouth, eyes wide.

“You think anyone heard that?” You whisper.

“I’m fine, thanks for the concern,” Five whispers back, eyes narrowed. “I better get going, just in case. Don’t want dad catching me here.”

You smile down at him. “Okay. Well, uh.” You wring your hands together, suddenly feeling awkward. You and Five don’t usually talk about your emotions with each other, but that seems to be changing lately. It’s… kind of weird. “Thanks, I guess. For checking on me. And talking to me.”

“It’s fine.” His voice sounds stilted, like he’s feeling awkward too. “And tell me next time you have a nightmare, will you? I can help.”

You frown down at him. “How’d you know I have them a lot?”

“Earlier you said it was ‘another’ nightmare.”

“Oh.” Well, shit. So you did. You hadn’t even noticed your slip-up. “I’ll... consider it.”

He holds out a hand to you. “No, promise you’ll tell me. Shake on it.”

Your frown deepens, not wanting to make the promise. It’s hypocritical of Five to ask you to promise anything, considering how difficult it is to ever extract a promise from him. You try to stare him down, but Five just stares back at you, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Fine,” You relent, taking his hand and giving one firm shake, “I’ll tell you.” Eventually. He didn’t say _when_ you had to tell him, after all.

“Straight away,” Five adds, not letting go of your hand. That bastard. Sometimes you could swear he’s the mind-reader.

“Ugh, fine!”

With that sorted, Five drops your hand, a faint smile touching the corner of his mouth. Pleased with himself, no doubt.

“Goodnight, Five.”

“Goodnight, Eight,” Five gets up, dusting himself off. “Oh, and by the way. I guess if I _had_ to choose, you might be my favourite sibling.” And with that, he blinks away.

In the silence after he’s gone, your cheeks burn. He’s never outright admitted it before.

Goddammit. You hate when he flusters you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellllooooo friends, I've been chipping away at this fic for the past couple of months. I have it mostly written, just need to do some final editing and finish up the last chapter.
> 
> There will be smut, but I'll warn when we're up to the chapter if you want to avoid that.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy it!


	2. And then...

Five looks tired at breakfast the next morning, and you feel kind of bad about it. But Five looks tired often enough that it doesn’t draw attention. You try to catch his eye so you can check in, but he doesn’t look at you.

Back to eating your eggs, then.

Everyone seems tired this morning. Your father requires total silence at meals, but he rarely ever joins you for breakfast. It’s easy to get away with talking as long as you’re not loud enough for it to carry, so mornings are usually filled with hushed voices, meaningful looks and the occasional stifled laughter.

This morning, nobody is talking at all. The energy in the room is dour. Luther is picking at his eggs with a deep frown on his face. Klaus stares at the limp spinach on his fork for so long that it slides back onto his plate. Five is eating, but it’s mechanical, his body on auto-pilot. No doubt he’s deep in thought, though about what, you have no idea. You hope he’s not planning anything stupid. That boy can be stubborn sometimes.

Vanya is looking around with wide, worried eyes, unsure what’s going on.

Your last mission had been… somewhat disastrous.

It had been a special case. A kidnapping. You handled a lot of high-scale robberies; banks, museums, hostage situations. A lot of general disasters, from blazing fires to collapsing buildings, and even once a collapsing mine. That one had given you nightmares about being crushed for weeks after. Even a mouse couldn’t survive a total cave-in like that, and your mirroring abilities are quite limited when it comes to transforming into anything smaller. Once again, Five had been your saving grace, blinking many of the terrified workers— and later, you— out.

But Five could only blink one person at a time, and this kidnapper hadn’t stopped at one. He had nine children stowed away in an old shed on the outskirts of the city by the time your father sent The Umbrella Academy.

The communication between all of you hadn’t been great. You don’t know what started it, but Luther and Allison were in bad moods to begin with, and Ben didn’t seem too happy either. There was tension crackling in the air the entire car ride there, and it came with them into the mission.

They got distracted. Luther barely talked to Ben, and Allison was short with him, which distracted Diego. Before you knew it, everyone was talking all at once, arguing like you didn’t hold the lives of nine children in your hands. Diego charged in too early, Luther hanging back too long.

The kidnapper brought his gun up to his head and shot himself, spraying two of the children cowering at his feet in blood. They had immediately started screaming. Diego stood frozen with his hand out, trembling, a small splatter of blood on his arm. He’d barely had time to stop the kidnapper shooting the children.

It could have gone much worse, but it hadn’t exactly gone well. Your father monitored the headset comms on every mission. He’d heard every bit of it, and you had all received a long lecture on your return. Your father wields his words like razor-sharp weapons and knows just where to strike to cut deep. Not only that, but when he thinks you’ve failed, he’ll intensify your training to extreme levels.

That was three days ago. You’re not surprised that everyone’s tired.

When your father emerges from his study after breakfast, dread settles heavy in your stomach. You have the distinct feeling this is related to you learning to mirror again. Your mother stands at the head of the table, smiling at all of you.

“Children, your father requires your presence in the foyer,” She says, hands clasped.

A low muttering breaks out as multiple of you start talking at once. Five catches your eye, and the two of you share a look that says ‘ _Oh great, what now?_ ’ The seven of you stand up from the table, breakfast abandoned; each of you knows that when your father asks for you, it means _now._ The only one who stays in their seat is Vanya, staring down at her breakfast without eating. Each of you also knows that Vanya isn’t included in the summons. She never is.

You shuffle out of the room to line up in the foyer, following behind Klaus. As you’re about to exit the room, your mother stops you. She wears the same benign smile she always does.

“Wait just a second, dear. Your collar is flipped,” You stop, letting her flip your collar back down. She fusses over you, even now when you’re almost adults. You don’t really mind — it’s very motherly, like something a parent should do.

There’s a lot a parent should do that your mother can’t, so you enjoy these small moments. When you were a young child, it unnerved you not being able to read your mother’s mind. The first time you realized she wasn’t like the rest of your family, you hid from her for a month. But she was nothing if not consistent with her small affections, even if you couldn’t sense the intent behind it.

She couldn’t stand up for you. She would never step in to stop your father from hurting you, pushing you too far, sending you into deadly situations. But her intentions were so plain, you couldn’t help but believe them. Whether or not she was capable of loving you, she looked after you, and you loved her for it.

“Thanks, mom,” You say, mustering up a small smile for her. Your siblings are already lined up by the time you get to the foyer, but your father doesn’t comment.

“Your failure last Friday has shown me that none of you are ready to be what the world needs of you,” Your father begins. “I had hoped that at the very least you would be able to do the most basic task of communicating, but instead you argued like foolish children. You are The Umbrella Academy, and you can be no use to anyone if you don’t act like it.”

Your father stands tall in front of all of you, his impenetrable gaze weighing heavily on each of you. “In light of this fact, I have made some changes to your lessons. You must push yourselves if you wish to become worthwhile. You are not normal children. These powers were bestowed upon you for a reason, and you must make sure it was not wasted on you. As it is, I strongly doubt your ability to help anyone when you cannot even help yourselves.”

“You can expect to see the changes to your timetable reflected in the new copies Grace will hand to you now.” His eyes shoot to you. “Number One, Number Eight, I expect to see you in the sparring room in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”

Your father turns on his heel without waiting for a response, leaving a buzzing of overlapping voices in his wake.

“Why do I have to be there?” Luther asks, shooting you a wary glance. You’re not sure what your expression looks like, but it must tell him all he needs to know.

“I don’t want her in my mind again,” His voice ticks up a notch, “She shouldn’t get to– to—” He gives Allison a strange look, but you’re too busy trying to shake off the hurt from Luther’s words to notice.

Lingering in the kitchen doorway, Vanya’s soft voice interjects. “But… didn’t Eight almost die last time she tried to do that?”

There’s a brief, awkward silence where everyone looks at you. You try to act like it’s no big deal, shrugging back at them.

“Dad must have found a way around it,” Luther says, looking unhappy. He sounds so confident. Sometimes you wish you had as much faith in your father as he does, because at least then you wouldn’t have to wonder if he would let you die for his own gain.

“Yeah, right,” Diego mutters under his breath, “cause dad cares so much about us.”

Luther stares directly into your eyes as he says, “I don’t want you in my head.”

“You think I want to do this?” You scoff, hurt by his reaction and uncomfortable knowing it’s completely justified. “I don’t have a choice.”

‘ _And neither do you’_ goes unspoken.

“Neither of us would have to do this if you hadn’t given up on your power so easily.”

You hear some low gasps around you, and your chest squeezes painfully, hurt by the accusation. Rage follows closely on its heels, swelling up until you’re ready to burst with it. He’s only doing it because he needs someone to blame, and that can’t be your infallible father. You try to tell yourself this, to calm down, but it doesn’t help.

Multiple people speak at once.

“Oh yeah, Luther? Well, maybe you should—” You start.

“Aw, come on, Luther, be cool, man.”

“Hey, you know that wasn’t—”

“Leave Eight alone, Luther,” Allison cuts over everyone. “This isn’t her fault.”

Luther backtracks so fast you almost roll your eyes. “No, I didn’t mean—”

“What else could you possibly have meant?” Five chips in dryly.

“I only– I just don’t want her in my brain, alright?”

You hate this, listening to them talk around you while you’re standing right there.

“And I sure as hell don’t want to be there,” You reply, trying hard not to scoff. “Not much going on in there. It’s hella boring.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Five quirk a brow, the corner of his lip turning up ever so slightly. Allison, on the other hand, isn’t amused.

“Eight, please.”

You shrug back at her.

“Luther, I know you don’t want anyone seeing your thoughts,” Allison says, “but that was uncalled for. You should apologize to her.”

Luther looks like a kicked puppy. “I wasn’t trying to be rude.”

“Yeah, that was mean, man. You know she nearly died, right?” Klaus adds. His mouth forms an ‘o’ shape as a thought occurs to him. “Maybe she would’ve become my ghost buddy. Gotta say, it _would_ be a nice change. I am not on great terms with most ghosts.”

“How about you volunteer to go instead then, huh?”

Utter silence swallows the room. Half of your siblings are looking at you while pretending they’re not, and the other half are avoiding looking at you. Ben looks so guilty, you’d almost describe his expression as stricken. Things have been... strained between you since the accident. The painful squeeze of your chest twists so hard you feel sick, and you have to keep pushing the rising anger back. Of course you understand. Of _course_ you do. You wouldn’t want someone seeing your thoughts either. Your mind is supposed to be your safest place, and it’s not like any of you get much freedom in this house. Thanks to your power, your siblings don’t even get that.

“That’s what I thought,” Luther says after the silence has stretched too long. Your fingers clench into fists, eyes falling to your feet.

“Fuck,” You mutter under your breath, pushing past Luther as you storm out of the room.

A cacophony of chatter explodes in your wake. You catch a few words of it as you leave.

“Great job, Luther.” Says Diego.

“You all know it’s true!”

“You didn’t have to be such a dick about it,” Five growls.

You cover your ears to block it out, your eyes stinging. As soon as you’re out of the room, you lean heavily against the closest wall, taking steadying breaths. You need to calm down. There’s no time to be so upset; you have to get to the sparring room before you’re any later.

Despite his protest, Luther is already waiting by the time you get there. He must have sprinted to make it in time; he’d never disappoint your father if he could help it.

“You’re late, Number Eight,” Your father addresses you, eyes stern. He always looks like he can see right through you, like he knows every thought you’ve ever had and finds you utterly unworthy. “Such behavior will not be tolerated.”

“I’m sorry, father,” You say, dipping your head slightly. He always took your apologies better if you made yourself seem small. “It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t. Number One, stand across from Number Eight.”

Luther complies immediately.

“Today, we will test the limit of Number Eight’s mirror ability. As Eight has exceeded the limit of that ability before, we will start small. Knowing one’s limits is extremely important to success, and they must be known before they can be pushed. I should hope Number Eight is aware of this after her previous failure.” You grit your teeth in response to this, taking steadying breaths to stop yourself from reacting.

“Number Eight, you will begin by viewing the contents of Number One’s mind without letting him into your own. To be a mirror, one must show discipline, and keep one’s mind a blank slate. A mirror shows only that which is around it; it is not a dimension of its own. When you mirror, you must become nothing.”

“Yes, father.”

You’ve heard this a thousand times before. Be nothing, think nothing, feel nothing. It’s a lot harder than it sounds, even with the countless hours of practice you have.

“What should I do, dad?” Asks Luther.

“Pick a distinct phrase and think of only that. Number Eight must user her powers to tell me what that phrase is.” Your father waits for Luther to nod in response before saying, “Now, begin.”

There was a time when you could slip into a meditative state in the blink of an eye, but it’s been years since you practised regularly. Doing so now is a constant stuttering start and stop, thoughts worming their way up even as you try to let them go. You haven’t tried to read someone’s thoughts since the accident. After your recovery, your father barely brought up that aspect of your powers at all, except to point out how you had sabotaged the mission. He had shifted your training to focus on the shape-shifting side of your abilities.

And you had been just fine with that.

But this was what you were for. Sure, you had started to see the flaws in your father’s thinking in the last few years, and it wasn’t only you. You still remember Diego’s words in your last interview. The seven of you had lined up, uniforms pristine, masks on, sitting on two couches across from the interviewer. They’d had to drag a second one in from another room to fit you all. Your father stood behind all of you, off-camera, watching the interview with a hawk’s eye.

Everything started smoothly. You had been coached on answers for weeks beforehand—as you were before every interview— and had years of interview experience on top of that. But the interviewer went off-script, asking,

“Do you think your father would have adopted you if you hadn’t had superpowers?”

There were a few sideways glances among you. This wasn’t something father had coached you on; none of you was sure how to answer.

“Well, he sure as hell didn’t adopt us for our shining personalities,” Diego said fiercely. “Just ask Number Seven.”

Father had always strictly forbidden any mention of Vanya to the press. As far as anyone knew, the mysterious Number Seven had been returned to their parents as a child after a late change of heart. Your father had cut the interview short immediately after.

The others, you weren’t so sure about. Ever since you and Ben had almost died four years ago, things had started changing, slowly but surely. The relationships between your siblings changed as they navigated their feelings about your father, about the way you were raised, about the way it was affecting all of you. In the weeks you spent recovering from mirroring The Horror, Five had spent every moment of his free time at your side. You’d gotten so much closer after that.

But you still lived under your father’s roof, and a future away from here seemed so distant it was unreachable. He had bought you for this, trained you for this, and together the seven of you had saved an incredible amount of lives.

So you had no choice. You take a slow, deep breath through your nose, focusing on the sensation of your lungs expanding. _I have no choice,_ you repeat, over and over.

_No choice._

You pushed down the fear clamping your heart, the queasiness in your stomach, the thoughts buzzing in your head. You push it all away and reach out.

It’s been so long, your feelers are clumsy, slow, and Luther’s mind is slippery, like picking up a fat slug with oven gloves on. It’s obvious he doesn’t want you in there; whether he means to or not, his mind is actively repelling you. It takes every bit of concentration you have to search for the gaps in his defenses and slip tendrils of yourself through, clumsily worming your way into his mind.

Luther winces — he knows you’re in his mind. Back when you were training regularly, you could slip in silently, completely undetected. Now, you get only surface impressions of Luther’s mind, catching occasional fragments of feelings and thoughts before they slip away from you. You dimly realize you’re sweating from the effort when a drop of it rolls into your eye, the stinging sensation making you lose your grip on Luther’s thoughts completely.

You gasp as you release him, rubbing at your eye. The strain of mirroring him is unreal, your hands shaking from the effort.

“I– I can’t,” You pant, voice shaky.

“You have tackled far greater challenges than this, Number Eight,” Your father responds, unyielding. “You will.”

“I need a break first,” You reply, a note of pleading creeping into your voice.

He shakes his head, “You have become weak. I should never have let Pogo convince me to cease this part of your training.”

A sickening spike of rage shoots through you. You had always thought that it had been your father’s decision, that he had finally taken mercy on you, barely a teenager, almost bleeding out on the fetid floor of a warehouse as your mind was being ripped apart by The Horror. The times you had used it as proof he cared about you— somewhere deep, deep down— were too many to count.

Would he really have let you die?

Your voice chokes with rage as you say, “I would have died. Every time I tried to mirror after the- the accident- the pain—”

Luther is glancing between the two of you, an uncharacteristically nervous look on his face. You’ve seen it before— it’s a warning look. It says ‘ _stop, you’re gonna upset dad’._

“Nonsense,” Your father responds dismissively. “We would have resumed your training with caution. You made it very obvious you weren’t ready to tackle mind-controlling.”

Yes, you had tried to mind-control The Horror. You’d had no other choice. It hadn’t worked— but The Horror had found you so very interesting, and it was so hungry. When you reached, it reached back. And then it tore your mind apart. It was the worst pain you’ve ever experienced, and it left you wide open to be shot. “I only lived through pure luck. If that guy’s aim had been even a little better…” You trail off. “Don’t you care at all?”

“As I said, your training would have resumed with the appropriate precautionary measures.”

“Can we get back to training?” Luther interjects, clearly trying to mediate.

“That is entirely up to your sister.”

For a while, you’re silent. The more you think about it, the more the anger creeps up your throat, building, building, until it’s pounding behind your eyes, consuming your thoughts. Your head swirls with all your father has done to you, every bit of pain he’s put your siblings through, your near-death saving Ben from his own power, Ben’s terror every time he was forced to bring The Horror out again after almost dying to it. Of course he would make you do this. Of course. A near-death never stopped him from continuing Ben’s training. It made sense that it had been Pogo.

When you speak, your voice is chillingly cold. “Would you care at all if one of us died?”

“I go to every extent to make sure every one of your remains in the best possible health. The medical care you receive is beyond exemplary.”

“That’s not what I’m asking!” You yell, unable to contain it. “Would you, personally, be upset? Would you even miss us?”

“Of course dad would miss us,” Luther says, eyebrows knit like he’s confused. You start to really wish he weren’t here for this conversation.

“Number Eight, you are missing the bigger picture. Every one of you is an invaluable asset to not only this academy, but the world. Being born with special abilities is inexorably linked with a massive amount of responsibility. By allowing your trivial worries to interrupt your training, you do the world a disservice.”

With each word your father says, a little more steam leaks out of you. By the end of his speech, the likes of which you’ve heard a hundred times before, you’re just tired. He never changes. Every time you think things will be different, every time you think you can get some real answers from him — he never changes. It’s one last twist of the knife when you look over to see Luther nodding along, determination lighting up his eyes.

Finally, your father says, “You may both take a short break. Training will resume in five minutes.”

You turn and storm out of the room.

But at the end of those five minutes, you’re standing across from Luther again.

\---

Five finds you in the library, reading in the lazy sunlight of the late afternoon. It shines across the rows of bookshelves, dark wood lining most walls of the room. A few wide shelves sit in one third of the room, packed with a wide assortment of books short and tall. Next to the shelves sit several reading chairs, plump red pillows inviting anyone to sink into them. Study tables sit further over, pushed into one corner of the room.

You’re so absorbed in your book, you don’t notice he’s blinked behind you until he says, “Watership Down again?”

“Five!” You jump in your seat, dropping your book. “Could you not?”

He shrugs, leaning down to pick up the book. When you hold out your hand for it, he turns away, plopping down in the plush chair across from yours. Nobody else is in the library right now, though you all share a free period on Friday afternoons. Considering what a nice day it is, you assume a lot of your siblings would prefer to be outside.

“Where were you up to?” Five asks, watching you expectantly.

You sigh, settling into your chair as you accept that he isn’t giving the book back. “About halfway down the left page.”

Five’s eyes flick back to the book, and he starts reading.

_“’Hazel isn’t dead,’ said Fiver._

_‘Yes, the men took him away. Fiver, I saw the blood.’_

_‘Yes, but you didn’t see Hazel, because he isn’t dead. Blackberry, you must do what I ask.’_

_‘You’re asking too much.’”_

When he reaches the end of the chapter, you say, “Fiver was always my favorite.”

Five’s brows raise behind the book, tone turning smug. “I bet he is.”

You roll your eyes. “I knew you’d say that. It’s not because he has your name.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Shut up, Five. You know that’s not the reason.”

He relents, saying, “Alright, I’ll bite. Why is he your favorite?”

You lean back further in your chair, bringing your knees up and wrapping your arms around them. “Well, he kind of has powers, like us. But he’s not a hero. He never asked for his powers, or for the journey he has to go on. He’s considered strange, but Hazel believes in him, and he uses his powers to look after Hazel despite all his fear.”

Five is silent for a while, watching you. You don’t meet his eyes, feeling oddly exposed after that admission.

“How many times have you read this book now, anyway?” Five asks.

“Uh… well.” Honestly, you’ve lost count. “I don’t know. It’s comforting.”

Five doesn’t reply, instead watching you thoughtfully. You get up and take the book from him so you won’t have to sit around fidgeting under his gaze. He lets you, leaning back into the chair as you walk over to the shelves nearby. You don’t put the book back, slipping it into the pocket of your blazer instead. It’s one of your personal favorites, the libraries copy long ago claimed for yourself.

You pretend to browse the shelves as Five says, “I take it training didn’t go well?”

It takes you a while to answer. “You could say that.”

“What happened?” He asks.

You sigh, still pretending to browse. “I got mad at dad.”

Five shrugs, “What else is new?”

“Yeah, but,” You cross your arms over your chest, “well, I shouted at him.”

“Hah. Didn’t know you had it in you, Eight.”

When you turn to him, he’s grinning. “It’s not a good thing, Five!”

“Sure it is. The old man has it coming, sometimes. He certainly did this time.”

You stare at him, mouth twitching down at the corners.

“So what’d you say?”

“I asked if he’d care if one of us died.”

Five whistles, low. “Wow. I kind of thought you’d just swear at him or something.”

“Maybe I should have,” You say, looking to the side again. “At least then he might have actually reacted. Even when I shouted, he was totally calm. He didn’t care at all.”

“Let me guess — he gave you some spiel that didn’t actually answer the question?”

“First he said he,” You raise your fingers to make air quotes for the next part, voice turning mock-haughty in an impression of your father, “‘provided us with exemplary medical care’ and ‘made sure we were in the best health possible’.”

Five snorts. “Technically true, if you forget that he’s the one who sends us into danger in the first place.”

“Then he gave me the whole ‘responsibility of your powers’ and ‘you owe the world’ and blah blah blah crap.”

“A classic lecture,” Five commiserates.

“And worse, Luther was there nodding along with every word, sparkles in his eyes, like ‘oh, please, dad, look at me, aren’t I just your favorite child because I eat up everything you say without a second thought occurring in my pea brain?’”

“The one muscle he lacks.” Five nods along.

“It’s not a muscle.”

He rolls his eyes, amicableness dropping immediately. “No shit, Sherlock. I was making a joke, not sure if you’ve heard of them.”

You hold your hands up in surrender at this sudden change in demeanor. “Okay, okay, jeez. Cool it, I was just saying.” Five has always absolutely hated being corrected.

“Whatever.” He drops it. “How did the mirroring go?”

You hesitate. “It was… fine. It’s harder than it used to be, but no… uh, you know, splitting headaches, or whatever.”

“Was it scary?” He asks, bluntly.

You shoot him an offended look. “No.”

“And now the truth?”

You want to puff up, to get offended, to avoid talking about this, but… you walk back to the chair across from Five, sitting down heavily. It’s always been difficult to deflect when Five gets serious. Deep down, you have to admit, you kind of like that he cares, especially since not all of your siblings receive this treatment. It makes you feel special. “Yeah, it was scary. I thought it might be like before. But it wasn’t, so.”

He nods.

“Once I got started, it was fine. I still hate doing it, but it didn’t hurt like it used to.” You stare down at your hands. ‘Hurt’ is an understatement. “Which is weird, because nothing’s changed.”

Five leans forward, chin resting on his laced-together fingers. “Something’s changed. You just don’t know what.”

You groan. “Well, I wish I knew.”

“Do you? Wouldn’t you rather just not use it?”

“Yeah.” You’re still not looking at him. “Yeah. Of course. But I have to, so… I wish I knew.”

“We can try to find out,” He says, “but you won’t always have to.”

You finally look up. He’s watching you intently, brown eyes boring into you, expression serious. You respond slowly, trying to work out what has him looking at you like you have answers he needs if he can only decipher them. It always makes you nervous when he gives you this intense look, like he can mirror you, but you can’t deny that something about it is incredibly attractive.

“What do you mean?” You ask, guarded.

“We’re nearly eighteen,” He replies. “We won’t always have to live like this.”

Your mouth slants into a slow, lazy grin. “Why, Five Hargreeves,” You say. “Are you suggesting that we run away?”

“It’s not running away if we’re adults.”

You sit up straight, realizing he’s serious. “But where would we go? And- who would it be? Just us?” The last part slips out without your permission, and your cheeks burn at the suggestion as if you’ve just admitted to something. It’s not like you haven’t thought about it before.

He waves your questions away, gaze dropping, saying, “The details aren’t important yet. We can work it out. It’s not like we don’t have any skills, and we’re well knownanyway. Just think it over.”

You stare back at him. “Have you thought about this a lot?”

His eyes shoot back to yours. “Have you?” He counters. You open your mouth to protest, say you asked first, and he adds, “You’d want it to be just us?”

You close your mouth just as quickly, swallowing. He’s flustered you again, but you don’t want him to know that, so you shrug noncommittally and say, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.”

A lie. His gaze bores into you, and once again you feel like he’s seen right through you. In reality, though imagining living in your own place with Five was a favorite fantasy of yours, it was always a far-away thing, in some distant future years from now. You’re not ready to leave your life behind. You’re not ready to leave your siblings behind.

You know it would be good to get out. It would be good for all of you — some more than others. Klaus worries you, and Vanya sometimes, too. Ben’s power has taken such a huge toll on him since the accident, he barely uses it at all. And it seems like he’s always terrified; you don’t need to mirror to know that. It’s obvious in the way he holds himself. Your relationship with him hasn’t been the same since you tried to mind-control The Horror, so you don’t know more than that, but you think it’s probably really bad for him here.

“Think about it, then,” Five says.

“Fine,” You reply, wanting this conversation to be over already. You often caught yourself saying more than you meant to around Five. “Now let me read in peace, will you?”

“Let me read it with you.” Five scooches his chair over, its legs scraping across the small, shaggy carpet protecting the floorboards.

“Fine, but I get to read first.” The two of you often read together, sometimes separately, each reading a different book, and sometimes together, both taking turns to read. Five likes reading more than listening, though, and often tries to read far past the end of a chapter without you noticing.

Five shrugs like he doesn’t care. “Knock yourself out.”

You shift around, getting comfortable in the soft chair, and start to read.


	3. The step backward

It’s been two weeks since you started training sessions with your father’s guidance. At first, you only trained with Luther. Part of ‘taking precautionary measures’, you guess. It was obvious he had loved every bit of time he got to spend under your father’s supervision, and his radiating desire to please made him completely insufferable during the sessions. He blocked you, hard, every single session. By the time you broke through his barrier, a week of training had passed, and you’d been battering your way in two hours a day every day of the week.

It was exhausting.

After that, your father had brought in your other siblings for training. According to your father, ‘ _It is essential you learn to mirror a diverse array of minds.’_ Sometimes Pogo would join you, observing your training, always hovering nervously like he expected you to get hurt. But most of the time, it was just your father and one of your siblings.

Diego had been easy to mirror. It was funny — he was obviously trying hard to block you, but he didn’t actually want to. He wanted you to see how good he was at what he did, his memories of missions, the fights he was proud of. He was too much of a show-off to block you.

Mirroring Allison was like being back in training with Luther, but the week you’d spent training with him prepared you to break through in only a few days. It was all coming back to you, the years of practice you’d had mirroring before the accident. Despite the strong barrier, her thoughts were mundane. It was hard to remember any of what you’d seen.

Klaus was difficult in his own way. Slipping through his barrier was like stepping into a pool of muddy water. It was easy to step in, but once submerged you weren’t sure which way was up. His mind was murky, softened around the edges by alcohol. It worried you.

Your father demanded detailed reports of your mirroring after each session, but you weren’t exactly honest. There were some things it was better your father didn’t know. Some things get muddled, anyways. The effect varies from person to person, but it can be hard to tell where your thoughts end and theirs begin.

Today is a slight change of pace. Your session is with Five, but your father wants you to mirror him while he blinks. Pinpointing his location adds an extra layer of difficulty, and the sudden blink of his mind out of existence is incredibly disorientating.

His mind is slippery, like you’re grabbing an eel. Every time your feelers grip him, you’re left grasping at thin air. You barely get a chance to brush against his barrier before he’s gone. It’s only ten minutes in when he starts taunting you.

“What’s the matter, Eight?” He asks, that stupid annoying smirk on his face. “Should I slow down?”

“That’d make it too easy.”

“Focus, Number Eight,” Your father reprimands.

“But he—”

“He is creating a valuable opportunity for you to work in an environment with distractions.”

Five quirks an eyebrow at you, looking smug. “Yeah. Don’t let me distract you, Eight.”

You barely resist sticking your tongue out at him, your attempts to mirror him starting with renewed vigour. You’ll show _him_ who’s slow.

Fifteen minutes in, Five’s brow is slick with sweat and he’s breathing hard. His teleporting has slowed down considerably, blue flickering around him for a few seconds before he jumps through. It’s on one of these jumps, his face scrunched in concentration, fists clenched as blue warbles feebly around them, that you finally grasp his mind.

It’s not at all like you expect.

His barrier is less than paper-thin, like the membrane stretched around an egg. You try so hard not to break through, but it’s as if you’re holding perfectly still while surrounded by the clinging threads of spider-webs on every side. A single movement sends a cascade of webs sticking and breaking around you, and despite your best intentions, you fall through.

His surface-level thoughts fade into the background, eclipsed by an endless current of emotions, sensations, and deeper thoughts usually pushed down by a flood of conscious-surface thoughts. Five is nervous, surprisingly so, apprehension bubbling up despite his attempts to drown it out.

You follow the feeling, unwillingly pulled along by the current of Five’s thoughts. Suddenly you’re completely submerged. A hundred streams flow around you, bits and pieces passing by. Everything is down here, from the subconscious workings of Five’s heart to the thoughts he’s having now to the things his mind gravitates towards. These last thoughts are plonked about in the stream like stones, not active but ready to be picked up later.

You’ve never been this deep in someone’s mind before; you didn’t know you could. You try to swim upwards, to escape, feeling like you’re drowning. You shouldn’t be down here. You don’t _want_ to be down here. But you keep being pulled back down, down, spinning endlessly in the stream of lungs-breathing nervous-tension ‘— _wish dad didn’_ t—’ _‘_ — _is Eight_ — _’._

The enormous bubble of thoughts catches you off guard. It hits you like a stone, the force of it swallowing you up in a second.

Warmth explodes inside you, fizzing its way through your veins. It blooms inside your chest, flowing down your arms, filling your fingers, your toes. You can hardly breathe for the intensity of the complete adoration that fills you. So many thoughts come attached to the feeling, you’re instantly overwhelmed.

‘ _How can someone be so_ — _’_

 _‘Don’t smile at me like that, stupid, how can I not_ — _’_

 _‘Need to work out how to cheer up_ — _’_

 _‘God, I want to kiss h_ — _Oh, shit_ — _’_

_‘Please, you have to be okay.’_

‘— _by my side._ ’

‘ _Eight!_ ’

Love. This feeling is love. Five loves you.

He loves you so much you feel turned inside out by it, electrifying your nerves, squeezing your heart until it’s almost painful.

You can’t be a blank slate. Not like this. You don’t mean to, but— you let him in.

‘ _You love me?’_

Distantly, you’re aware of his eyes widening an almost comical amount. Then he shoves you out so violently you stumble on your own feet.

“Five,” You gasp, still recovering. You catch a glimpse of his face, flushed all the way to the tips of his ears, and then he’s gone.

“What is the meaning of this, Number Eight?” Your father barks, his usually stern face pinching even more.

“I– I’m not sure, father. I’ll go after him.” 

“You will do no such thing,” He responds, “and if you cannot tell me what he intended to do, then you have failed your training.”

You hesitate, trying to decide how much to tell him. “I… I fell very deep into his mind. There were too many thoughts for me to decipher just one.”

Your father’s hand comes up to stroke his goatee. “Explain.”

It takes you a few moments to put into words. “I could see the subconscious workings of his mind. His heart beating, his lungs breathing. And I was experiencing all of his senses… all of them at once. It was a thousand times more than I usually see.”

There’s silence as your father considers this.

“Did you have control over how much you saw?” He asks.

“No. I think I could gain control, in time.”

“This new facet of your power could be very useful,” He finally says, “but you will have to learn discipline, even more so than before. You must start taking your training seriously, Number Eight.”

You lower your head, too distracted for his words to carry their usual sting. “Yes, father.”

“We have much to do. We must teach you control, or you will be a danger to yourself and the rest of The Umbrella Academy. You cannot go losing yourself in the mind of whoever is around you willy-nilly.”

It’s difficult not the fidget on the spot after what you saw. You want so badly to run off and find Five, still reeling from the revelation that he _loves_ you. “I understand. I won’t disappoint you.”

“See that you don’t.”

“What should I do now Five’s gone?”

“I will send Grace to retrieve him. In the meantime, you will practice emptying your mind. It is obvious that you need more extensive training to do so.”

It’s difficult to hold in your sigh. “Yes, father.”

The rest of your training session is near-torturous. You can’t focus at all, your thoughts constantly wandering back to Five. He doesn’t return for the rest of your session, and after thirty minutes, Grace comes in to tell your father she’s unable to find him.

The moment your father dismisses you, you make a beeline for Five’s room. By the time you reach his door, you’re vibrating with nerves. The adrenaline of your discovery had worn off during the rest of your training, and now all of your muscles are tense with nerves.

It takes five minutes of standing at his door to work up the courage to knock lightly. When there’s no answer, you knock louder, and finally end up creaking his door open to find an empty room.

Of course he’s not there. He knows this is the first place you’d look.

You sigh wearily, not sure what to do with yourself now. There’s no way you can focus on anything, not before you get to talk to Five. You brainstorm all the places he could be — the library? Too obvious. Out in the garden somewhere? You do find him there often. But you can tell he’s avoiding you, and Five’s too smart to go somewhere you know.

You set out to check those places anyway, because you need to do _something_ or you’re going to implode.

\---

In the end, you don’t see him again until dinnertime. Your father doesn’t react when he shows up, so you assume they’ve already worked things out. You wonder what Five told him.

He’s very pointedly not looking at you. In fact, he avoids looking at you for the entirety of dinner, and excuses himself as soon as possible with a, “May I be excused, dad?” which is _far_ too polite for Five, especially considering the way he speaks to your father lately.

“You are free to go, Number Five,” You father replies without looking up from his plate.

For the first time all night, Five glances over you. You’re already looking back at him, and the moment he meets your eyes, he freezes. For the barest fraction of a second, he stands there, eyes wide — and then he turns around and absolutely books it out of the room.

You grit your teeth in frustration. You need answers, dammit.

“Father, may I be excused as well?” You ask.

“You will finish your dinner and be excused with the rest of your siblings,” He replies. He still hasn’t looked up from his food.

The sigh you let out is audible across the room. A few of your siblings are watching you now, as your father says, “Do you have something to say, Number Eight?”

Whoops. That wasn’t meant to be so loud.

“No, nothing.”

“Then I would like a chance to enjoy Meneer van Els for at least some of my meal.”

“Sorry,” You mumble, and fall silent.

And of course by the time you find yourself at Five’s door for the second time that day, he’s well and truly retreated into his room. You rap loudly on the hollow wood, frustration squashing down your nerves.

“I know you’re in there, Five. Come on, I just want to talk.”

When there’s no response you knock louder, incessant. Your knuckles are sore by the time Klaus comes up the stairs and catches you.

“Heeey, sis, what’s all the noise about? Five stealing your shit again?” He grins at you.

“Wha– Five’s never stolen my stuff,” You say, then pause. “Well, not for a few years now.”

Klaus shrugs. “Little bastard is always stealing my pens.”

From behind the door you hear, “Those were _my_ pens, you cretin.”

You turn back to the door and start knocking again. “Dammit, Five! I just want to talk!”

“Ooh,” Klaus says, “Drama, huh?”

“No,” You lie grumpily. Klaus stands next to you, unmoving. With each passing second, your scowl intensifies, and eventually, miraculously, Klaus seems to take the hint.

He holds up his hands and starts backing away. “Alright, I’ll leave you kids to it. Give me the deets later, Eight!” He says this last part with an exaggerated wink.

The moment he’s gone, you turn back to Five’s door and say, “That’s it, I’m coming in.”

Five isn’t the only one who can use his powers to get into other’s rooms, not that you usually use yours for this. You take a deep breath and focus on a mouse — mammals were always easier than bugs, similar enough to you to make transforming little effort. Mice still required some effort from you, like flexing a muscle as hard as you could. Holding it for a few seconds was trivial, but after a few minutes you could barely manage at all.

Transforming was still strange, even after the countless times you’d done it. You could never quite get used to the feeling of your skin shrinking and stretching simultaneously, your bones crunching and shifting, your hair wriggling its way back into your scalp. It wasn’t painful, but it was unpleasant, and it took energy to maintain. The bigger the differences between yourself and the creature you turned into, the more difficult maintaining the form was, and mice were a lot smaller than you.

Still, the few seconds it took you to wriggle under Five’s door were practically effortless.

You’re in and shifted back to normal in five seconds flat, but Five has always been quick on his feet. By the time you’re human again, he’s already awash in the blue light of a portal being opened.

“Wait!” You let out a shout, leaping at him and wrapping your arms around his torso. For the briefest moment, you can’t breathe, and then you’re surrounded by cool night air nipping at your skin.

“Get off me!” Five demands, trying to wriggle out from under you. The two of you are sprawled out in the garden, dew-slicked grass pressing cool against your skin.

“I had no idea you could jump so far with another person,” You say, quite impressed.

“Me neither, until five seconds ago.” Five sounds extremely unhappy, voice low and clipped. “Now let me up.”

“No way!”

“You’re crushing me.”

“Oh– sorry.” You’re not sure if it’s true, but you shift positions just in case, carefully placing your knees on either side of his stomach, weight keeping him pinned. From there you sit back, looking down at him. “I’m not letting you go until you give me some answers, though.”

“Fine,” He sighs.

You perk up, surprised at how easy that was. “Really?”

“No.” And then he’s wriggling under you again, trying to get away. Your hands shoot out, pinning his shoulders to the soft ground beneath him.

“Come on, Five,” You say. “What are you gonna do, avoid me forever?”

“If I have to.” Your lips twitch down at that, hurt.

“Yeah? And why would you have to?”

He gives you the most deadpan look you’ve ever seen, and coming from Five, that’s saying something.

“You know precisely why,” He replies, eyes hard as he looks up at you. He’s trying so hard to seem unaffected, but the slight flush to his cheeks gives him away.

“So what?” You say, and then hesitate, not sure what to say next. You’d been so worried about finding Five and talking to him, you hadn’t stopped to consider what you would say.

There’s a vague feeling tugging at your heart, like a dog nipping incessantly at your heels. It’s a feeling you’ve had for a while that there’s something a little off about your relationship with Five, something a little different to the rest of your siblings. The two of you have been inseparable for years now, even if it was mostly in the soft in-between moments when you found yourselves alone. The feeling he has for you— that warm, encompassing fondness and it’s burning intensity— it’s one you’re familiar with. It’s something you’ve felt about him. But... he’s your closest friend, the only one you can relax and be yourself around, the only one who is always there to help you. So what if you found his self-satisfied grin unfairly attractive, and his rare genuine smile did odd, gooey things to your insides? So what if his touch made a warm, squirmy heat pool low in your belly?

It didn’t have to mean anything. You were just... very close and grew up in weird circumstances. Of course you would feel that way. And even if it did mean something, there was no way he would ever reciprocate. Not Five– distant and aloof, tactical, smart, far too charming for his own good, and not at all interested in that kind of thing, especially with you.

Or so you’d thought.

“So did you just follow me down here to stare at me like a creep?” Five asks, echoing your words from the night before.

“Ha, ha.”

“I– what I saw—” You start, heat creeping into your cheeks at the thought of it.

“We really don’t need to talk about it,” Five grits out, eyes shifting away to avoid your gaze.

“We really _do,_ ” You shoot back. “Will you at least listen to me?”

When Five doesn’t say anything, you go on, “I’m sorry, Five.” He cringes so hard underneath you that you feel it. “I shouldn’t have ever– I didn’t mean to see that. I didn’t mean to go so deep into your mind. I didn’t know I could. I kind of got… trapped. I was trying to leave.”

There’s a long silence before Five replies, “It’s fine. You done?”

“Not even close.” Five cringes under you again, so you add, “Will you at least listen before you decide what I have to say is bad?”

Five’s face pulls into a nasty scowl. “Oh, what, like you feel– you—” He cuts himself off, falling quiet. You’ve never seen Five speechless before.

It’s too much to say directly; you don’t know how.

“Five, last night when you came to my room… if that was anyone else, you think I would have,” You clear your throat, the heat in your cheeks intensifying, “uh, cuddled with them?”

“That wasn’t…” Five trails off. “Okay, maybe it was.”

“Yeah. Well. Yeah.” You shrug. “It was.”

Both of your faces are flushed now, and Five still refuses to meet your eyes.

“If that were any of our other siblings, you think I would have done that with them? Or even told them what was bothering me?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s a Hargreeves thing.”

You laugh dryly. “It isn’t. Would you have done that for Vanya? For Klaus?”

“No.” He lets out a long breath. “But you already know I… you know.”

“Okay, well, I wouldn’t have done that with anyone else. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have said,” You bring both your hands up to cover your face, palms pressed against your warm cheeks, “that joke about me being cute.”

“Joke?”

Your eyes widen behind your hands, and you spread your fingers so you can peer through them. Five is smiling faintly, dimple showing on his cheek.

“So you believe me?” You say, dropping your hands slowly.

He shrugs, smile dropping. “I believe that we’re closer to each other than we are any of our other siblings.”

Your mouth presses in a thin line, frustrated. “Why won’t you listen to me? I’m saying I li- _mmph_!”

You’re cut off as Five’s hand shoots up to cover your mouth, and you stare down at him, unimpressed.

“Don’t say it, Eight.” He says, face pinched tight. “I know you think you feel the same way I do, but you don’t get it.”

You lick his hand.

“Ugh, _gross_ —”

“You don’t get to decide that!” You snap. “I literally experienced how you feel, I think I’d know.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t.”

“How don’t I know?” You demand furiously, “tell me.”

“Work it out yourself.”

You grip the hair on your scalp in both hands in frustration. “You! You are completely insufferable!”

“And you are utterly ignorant.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be if you’d just tell me!”

He shrugs, that stupid stubborn look he gets appearing on his face. “Again, work it out yourself.”

“Fine.” You hold your arms out helplessly in an exaggerated shrug, letting them drop to twist into the front of Five’s shirt. In the same moment, you lean down, spine curving as you bring your face to Five’s. You stop a hair’s breadth from him, his shaky breaths ghosting across your lips. He’s completely frozen underneath you, but so warm and solid and alive. The frustration that had built inside you fizzles out, replaced by warmth, so much warmth, trickling through your veins in small starbursts of heat.

He swallows audibly underneath you when you hesitate. You muster up the last scraps of your courage and finally press your lips against his. They’re dry, but soft, and the small press of skin against skin makes you feel like your insides are exploding and imploding all at once, soft gooey warmth sliding through your veins. The two of you stay like that for a good thirty seconds, and by the time you slowly pull away you’re light-headed with giddiness. Your lips stick slightly as you pull apart.

Neither of you says anything. You’re too busy recovering from the ridiculous giddiness blooming inside you, a dopey grin forming on your face.

“Can I—” You start, at the same time Five says, “Look, it’s a full moon.”

You blink at him, pulled out of the bubble where the world is nothing but the two of you. Pulling back, you finally roll off of him, flipping over so you’re lying on your back beside him. The dewy grass soaks into your blazer.

“So it is,” You reply, staring up at the opalescent sphere hanging in the sky, its pale beams reaching out to you through the darkness of the night. The moon is bright and crisp against the night sky, seeming so close even though the gap between you is unfathomably wide. Faint wisps of cloud drift past, obscuring your view, but the sky is mostly clear, the brightest of stars shining through. The rest have been obscured by the harsh city lights.

“Are we good?” You ask eventually, barely breathing the words into the stillness that has enveloped you, as if speaking quietly enough will keep the fragile peace between you.

“Yeah,” Five replies, voice just as soft, “we’re good.”

The two of you lie there, completely silent, until your mother calls you for bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thankyou so much to everyone who has left kudos and commented so far, it means a lot to me <33 I hope you enjoy this chapter of accidental love confessions and Five and Eight being idiots about it.


	4. And the second

Five’s acting weird.

He’s been acting weird for a week now. It’s starting to get annoying.

It’s not that he’s outright avoiding you like before. Now, he just talks to you without ever _talking_ to you, mysteriously finding something to do anytime you’re around. He treats you like Luther, or maybe even worse than Luther. And Five thinks Luther is an idiot, so that’s saying something.

Your siblings have started to notice. Worse, they’ve begun to shoot you pitying looks when it happens. Ben is the worst for it, and sure, it’s nice that he cares, but after a week of it you could really do without. Vanya comes a close second.

You’re lucky it’s been a quiet week for missions. The one father had sent you on was tense, Five snippy and brushing you off anytime you talked to him. It didn’t matter if it was mission-related. It didn’t matter that you needed his help to infiltrate the warehouse for your part of the plan. He was cold the whole time, and it was too much for you. You talked back. It only escalated from there, until the two of you were having a not-quite-shouting match in the middle of a mission.

You were just fortunate it wasn’t over comms— your father hadn’t heard.

Honestly, it’s pissing you off. Five had _said_ you were good, but obviously that wasn’t the case. It was frustrating and embarrassing and annoying and underneath all that it was making you a little miserable.

You miss him, okay?

You’ve had a long week alone to think about that. A lot of time to spend stewing in your thoughts, unable to escape the swirling torrent of questions. You’re starting to think that you maybe, sort of, slightly, possibly, might be in love with Five. Yes, okay, in hindsight it had been obvious. But it was always so easy to just chalk it up to your weird upbringing, or the fact Five is obviously just amazing and everyone sees him that way, or the knowledge that you were bad at identifying your own emotions and were just overthinking something that was actually nothing.

Nobody else in this house gets you as well as Five does. Things are always so easy with him — at least when he’s not accidentally revealing his feelings for you, denying you could return them, avoiding you, saying things are fine, and then avoiding you again, but _meaner_. The bastard.

It’s gotten to the point where you’re avoiding him in return, just so you won’t have to listen to him extracting himself from the room five minutes after you show your face for the umpteenth time.

You’re on your way to the library when you hear it. It’s early evening, the barest hint of light left peeking over the horizon outside, filtering in through the windows. Just as you’re about to walk into the room, you hear Five’s voice.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” He says, voice cold.

You duck back out of the room, pressing yourself against the wall next to the open door.

“It’s obviously upsetting her,” Allison argues. “Whatever happened, it doesn’t mean you get to treat her this way. You’re kind of being a jerk.”

“I’ve heard that from you so many times it’s meaningless at this point.”

Cautiously, you creep up to the door, peeking into the library as inconspicuously as possible. Five has his back to you, facing Allison and Luther. The two of them are sitting across from each other in reading chairs, though neither of them has a book. In one corner of the room you see Vanya, reading in a beanbag. It looks like she’s trying to pretend she isn’t listening, though there’s no way to avoid overhearing the loud conversation. You pull your head back, not wanting to be caught.

“She’s right. You’re being an ass,” Luther says.

“I couldn’t care less what you think in that pea brain of yours, Luther,” Five shoots back.

“See, that’s normal,” Allison says. “That’s how you usually treat Luther. How you usually treat me. But not Eight.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t have to if you’d stop sticking your nose places it doesn’t belong,” Five replies.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Luther says, and is promptly ignored.

“I’m just trying to help, Five.”

“The last thing I’ll ever need is your help,” He bites back, and you can tell he’s getting pissed.

“Ooh, burn,” Comes a voice from beside you. You startle violently, looking over to find Klaus pressed up against the wall next to you. “By the way, why are we hiding?”

“Shhhh,” You shush him, bringing a finger to your mouth.

“Right. Covert-operation, top secret. Got it,” He replies, voice not quite a whisper but thankfully much quieter. If you weren’t so focused on the conversation happening in the other room, you’d be exasperated.

“Vanya,” Allison says, “Five will listen to you. Tell him he’s been acting like a jerk.”

“Really, Allison?” Five says, agitated.

There’s an uncomfortable pause, and you hear the beanbag shifting. “Um… You have been pretty cold to her, Five.”

“Ohh,” Klaus comments, “I get it. They’re talking about you! I do love me some eavesdropping.” You shoot him a look, trying to keep him quiet. It’s bad enough you were caught eavesdropping at all. You’re still trying to decide whether it’s better or worse that it’s Klaus instead of Ben or Diego.

“Like I said, none of your business,” Five tells Vanya.

“Okay…” She replies. “Maybe you could be a bit nicer though?”

“You know nothing about the situation.”

“Please? I don’t like seeing Eight so sad.” You bristle at this. You haven’t been _that_ sad, or at least you weren’t obvious about it. Were you?

There’s another long pause.

“Fine. Okay. Fine,” Five says begrudgingly. “Now will you all get off my ass about this?”

You let out a sigh of relief, glad the tense conversation is over.

“No,” says Luther, making you groan under your breath.

“Man, they’re really going for it!” You wish Klaus would just be quiet. His commentary doesn’t help the tense clenching of your stomach as you listen to the argument happening behind you, nor the nervous-hopeful feeling fluttering around inside you that you don’t want to acknowledge.

“You’re a danger to all of us like this. Both of you jeopardised our last mission because you couldn’t put your argument aside for even a few hours. As Number One, I think I should know why.”

Hesitantly, Vanya speaks up. “Luther… maybe you should let them work it out…?” It’s passive like she always is. Vanya talks like she’s trying to take up as little space in the conversation as possible.

You hear the frown in Luther’s voice as he says, “You wouldn’t understand. Our lives are on the line out there, Vanya. If it interferes with the mission, then I need to put a stop to it.”

“Like I said,” Five bites out, each word clipped, “It’s none of your business. And if I was going to tell anyone, I’d rather gouge out my own spleen with a melon baller than have it be you.”

“Vivid,” Klaus comments beside you.

You hear Luther stand up. “I’ll take this to dad if I have to.”

Five lets out a bitter laugh. “Of _course_ you will. You’re nothing if not daddy’s boy, right, Number One? Never mind that the rest of us have woken up to the fact he doesn’t give two shits about us and started having thoughts of our own, no, you just want to keep following him like a brainless lap-dog until the end of time.”

There’s an angry shout, and the sound of pounding footsteps, followed by the telltale _pop!_ of Five teleporting, all the air being sucked into the space he occupied at once. You and Klaus stick your heads round the doorframe, trying to see what’s happening.

Luther’s head swings around wildly, looking for Five. The moment he spots him reappear behind the reading chairs, he moves toward him.

“Shit, are they fighting?” Klaus asks, sounding much too giddy for your liking. “Fuck yes!”

“The worst part is,” Five continues, “you don’t even get it. It’s not like you understand why the rest of us want to leave.” He gives a humourless laugh. “You think we’re wrong!”

Luther lunges right over the chairs, almost falling over in his attempt to get to Five.

_Pop!_

Five blinks away again.

Allison watches this go down, unfazed, though she doesn’t exactly look pleased. When it comes to Five, Luther is all bark and no bite. He knows he won’t land a hit on him, so Luther throws his weight around with a readiness reserved only for Five.

He’s getting steady on his feet when Five appears again.

“Honestly, I almost feel bad leaving you behind. Almost.” Five’s head tilts sideways, a strained, sarcastic smile on his face.

Luther freezes, and your heart along with him. “You’re leaving?”

Five is leaving?

“Me, and every single one of us with an iota of sense in our brains.” He seems to consider this for a second. “And Klaus. So… everyone but you.”

“Rude,” Klaus whispers, and you huddle back against the doorway, trying to be as stealthy as possible while still getting a view, all pretence that you’re not eavesdropping gone in the face of Five’s revelation.

Luther glances at Allison, face tight, and asks, “Allison, is this true?”

Allison hesitates. “Some of us have been making plans for the future…”

“Have you?”

“I… Luther, this isn’t how I wanted to have this conversation.” Her voice drops to a pained whisper.

Luther’s expression scrunches up, looking wounded. It stays that way a few brief seconds before it morphs into icy rage. He looks squarely at Five.

“Eight won’t go with you,” He declares.

_Wait, what?_

“Oh, I’m sure you’d know, seeing as how you’re such good friends and all.”

_Five wants me to go with him?_

Would you? You always imagined your future with Five in it — having your own house, being able to spend time together whenever, doing whatever you wanted, any time of the day, and always having Five to go to when you didn’t have the answers, the two of you working it out together.

But you’d imagined it– later. A lot later. Some unspecified time in the future, when you were done with the Academy, when everyone was ready to move on. Maybe, oh, ten years from now.

Not _soon_.

“She cares,” Luther says. “She wants to help people. Eight believes in what we’re doing, unlike you.”

Five’s derisive smile is morphing into a dangerous glare. “Stop talking like you know her. It’s obvious you don’t.”

“She’s my sister too!”

“You didn’t even realize Allison was leaving. Thought that one was pretty obvious, myself.”

And that sets Luther off again, swinging his fists at Five, who of course will just blink away. Except he doesn’t because he looks your way. The moment he catches your eye, he freezes. Luther’s fist connects directly with Five’s cheekbones, snapping his head sideways with a _smack!_ Then he stills, startled his punch landed.

For a moment, the room falls into utter silence.

Then Five mutters, “Fuck this,” and he’s gone, popping out of existence.

Vanya’s mouth is open in shock, eyes darting around the room like she has no idea what to do. When they land on you, she colours, hiding her face behind her book.

“Hi, Eight.”

You step out into the doorway. No reason to hide now. Klaus steps out beside you, grinning. “Man, you really pissed Five off, Luther. That was great.”

Luther doesn’t respond, looking at his fist like it had punched Five without his permission. Vanya gets up, shutting her book softly.

“I’m gonna go to my room,” She mumbles, walking past you and Klaus. She shoots you the apologetic look you’ve gotten so familiar with over the past week as she leaves.

You have no clue what to say to Luther — to any of this. So many questions bounce around your head, wondering which of you is leaving, wondering if it’s _everyone_ , wondering when. But it’s all so much, you don’t want to know. Not yet. For a bit longer, you can pretend things are normal.

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna go too,” You say, turning around.

“Wait, Eight,” Allison stops you. “You should talk to him.”

You give a noncommittal shrug in response, mumbling “maybe,” then make a beeline down the hallway.

 _Escape!_ You need some time to think after that bombshell of a conversation. It’s time to leave Allison and Luther to their awkward conversation and go bury yourself in a good book, where all the adventures are exciting, the consequences far away, and everything works out just fine at the end.

To your dismay, Klaus follows you.

“Sooo Eightie, have I ever told you you’re my favourite sister?” He says, keeping up with you as you pick up the pace.

Coming from Five, those same words had seemed… special. Meaningful. From Klaus, they only put you on guard.

“What do you want?” You ask, frowning.

“The deets, _obviously_. Come on, Eight, you can’t deprive me of such juicy drama.” You groan.

“Just leave me alone, Klaus! I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not with you.”

He pouts. “Well, who would you talk about it with?”

“Nobody. So don’t go asking any of the others, either.”

“Aw, come on. That’s lame. No gossip at all?”

“No! Now leave me alone, I’m being serious.” Your fists clench at your sides, frustration thrumming through you. It’s normal for Klaus to pester you, though he’s been around less since he started disappearing at random intervals a few months ago (shit, does that mean he’s leaving soon?). But hearing the argument between Luther and Five had left you feeling scared and helpless. Things were changing so quickly, everyone around you making plans you hadn’t known about, and you were powerless to stop it.

“But—”

Enough is enough. You morph into a grey house-cat, lithe and fast, and bound away from Klaus.

“No fair!” Klaus complains, not bothering to chase after you. He knows he won’t catch you. In this form, you sneak through small gaps like a storm-cloud, transforming into something smaller if you ever can’t fit. In this form, you could hide from anything.

If only you could hide from your own thoughts.


	5. Like pulling teeth

Nestled back in the safety of your room, you lie on your bed, staring at the chalk-white ceiling. Maybe Allison is right. Maybe you should talk to Five. But he hasn’t exactly made it easy on you, and some stubborn part of you wants him to be the one to fix this. He caused the problem, he’s put no effort towards fixing it, and he ignored your attempts to fix it last time. Most of the time, you find his stubbornness endearing— but most of the time, it’s not directed at you.

You spend the whole evening mulling over this, stewing in your frustration. At dinner, you notice Five watching you apprehensively over the sounds of ‘Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers’, but you’re so cross with him you avoid his gaze.

It almost makes you expect something. Maybe he’ll talk to you after all? You try to squash that thought, not wanting to get your hopes up like you have every single time you’ve seen him in the past week. He doesn’t say anything after your father dismisses the table, but you swear his eyes are on you as you leave the room.

That night you sleep fitfully, tossing and turning as you lie awake thinking about your siblings leaving. Everything is changing, and you’re not ready for it. You didn’t expect it. You haven’t had time to prepare yourself; you thought you had time. Remembering Luther’s reaction to Allison’s admission, you find yourself in the very rare situation of wanting to discuss your worries with him.

Sighing wearily, you cover your face with your hands. This isn’t working. There’s no way you’re getting to sleep tonight, never-mind the training you have to repeat tomorrow. You’re grateful it isn’t with Five, but mirroring on no sleep is difficult. You need focus.

With a groan, you heave yourself out of bed, pulling on a pair of soft sleep shorts on the way to the door. If you’re going to suffer, you’ll at least suffer with tea.

Moonlight streams across the kitchen, light beaming over the stove and illuminating your skin. You’re so tired, you almost miss the soft pad of footsteps on the tiles behind you as you wait for the kettle to boil. You tilt your head to see Five lingering in the doorway, a mirror of your eavesdropping earlier today, though he isn’t trying to hide.

“Couldn’t sleep?” He asks, voice soft. Hearing him talk to you normally for the first time in so long makes your heart give a painful squeeze.

You take a slow breath, trying to sound impassive. “Not really.” You turn back towards the stove.

“Me neither.” His soft footsteps draw closer, stopping a few meters behind you.

“Hm.”

Five clears his throat. He never was good at apologies— they always came out like pulling off a tick, sticking and a little painful.

“Not sure caffeine will help with that…” He says.

You remove the kettle just before it boils, stopping it short of letting out a shrill shriek. “It’s herbal. You know dad doesn’t let us have caffeine.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, but we sneak out all the time. I thought you might have gotten something.”

“Nope,” You respond, pouring the almost-boiling water into your favorite mug— a grey cat lounges on the side, looking pleased to be napping. You may or may not have modelled the cat you turn into on this particular cat after mom bought it for your birthday last year.

The smell of peppermint curls up towards you as it brews, a scent sharp with a hint of softness around the edges, like Five. Wait, no– no, stop that. You’re meant to be mad at Five, not thinking fondly about him.

He sighs. “Eight, listen. About what you heard today. Which, by the way, nice eavesdropping.”

You frown down at your tea, dunking the tea bag with more fervor than it really needs.

“I just happened to walk in,” You mutter.

“Don’t even try that on me.” A pause. “Klaus told me.”

Your frown deepens, and when you ditch your tea bag into the bin, it’s with more force than necessary.

“That bastard.”

“Yeah, well,” You hear the hint of a smile creep into Five’s voice, “he may or may not have been threatened. Something about chopping his fingers off and stuffing them into his liver.”

Finally, you turn to face him, tea cradled between your palms. “So the bastard was you,” You joke, frown easing up. He smiles back at you and you force yourself to scowl again. It’s far too easy to slip back into your usual effortless banter when he’s acting normal. Stupid Five and his stupid charm and your stupid missing his voice.

“Are you really leaving?” You ask him, trying very hard to keep your voice steady.

“Eventually.”

“Well, yeah,” You reply. “I figured everyone would leave, eventually. But… soon?”

He hesitates. “I thought… when I told you to think about it before, I thought you understood. Our birthday is coming up, and I’m not even sure all of us will wait that long.”

Your hand comes up to clasp your forehead, brows furrowed. “That soon? I had no idea.”

“For a mind-reader, you’re very dense sometimes.”

“Five!”

He shrugs, “It’s true.”

“Fine, yes, I’m stupid. I’m the only one who didn’t see that, apparently, everyone hates it here so much that they’re going to leave as soon as they can! Or sooner! I already feel pretty stupid about it actually, so if you could just lay off I’d appreciate it.”

He looks perplexed when you’re done, like this outburst was unexpected. “I never said you were stupid.”

“Okay, whatever! You just implied it.”

“No. I don’t think you’re stupid,” He frowns at you, mouth a stubborn slant. “You’re actually incredibly clever most of the time.”

Your defensiveness drains away, and you struggle not to blush at the praise. “Well. Thankyou, I guess.”

“And you’re right. Most of us hate it here.” The words shouldn’t sting as much as they do, but it feels like each one pierces right into the soft squishy parts of your heart.

“Is it that bad?” You ask, voice quiet.

“Eight…” Five looks pained, “Do you really have to ask? Dad’s been making you mirror for hours every day, even though it’s dangerous.”

“It wasn’t, in the end.”

“But it could have been. It could have hurt you.”

“But…”

“Why do you like it here?” He asks.

You take a slow sip of your tea, giving yourself time to think. It’s true there are bad parts to it. You understand. You have no control over your lives, except what you steal away when your father’s not looking. And some of the things he makes you do… the things he puts your siblings through… they’re awful. But everything is easy here. Even the bad parts, you’re used to them. And the good parts— you won’t find them anywhere else. This is the only place in the world where you can use your powers to thwart the plans of people who want to cause harm. The only place you can be you and be good at what you do.

“All of us are together here,” You say, slowly, “and all of us understand what it’s like. To have powers… to go on missions. To grow up in this house. And, Five, I’m good at missions. I _like_ going on missions. What else would I do?”

“What if I told you there was another place like that. We wouldn’t all be there, but you and I know what it’s like. All of it. And we could keep doing it together.”

“There— what? What place?”

“It’s—”

The two of you freeze at the sound of a door creaking open on the floor above. It splits through the stillness of the night, echoing in your giant house. There’s only one person who moves through the house at this time with no care for the noise they’re making.

Five takes three steps towards you. “Let’s go,” He whispers, grabbing onto your arm. You brace your tea against your chest in preparation, and for a moment every one of your senses registers nothing at all. Then your feet hit soft carpet, and you find yourself standing in the middle of Five’s room. It’s so dark you can barely see him, and you blink as your eyes adjust.

The two of you are silent for a while, listening. After ten minutes, you hear your father’s door creak open again, then the _click!_ of it closing.

You let out a long breath. “Okay,” You say, eyeing Five, “you have some explaining to do.”

Five moves away from you, walking over to sit heavily on his bed. The mattress sinks under his weight, blankets drooping toward him.

“I guess that’s fair,” He replies, face tilted away from you in the darkness.

“You guess?” You echo, annoyed all over again. “You spent all week avoiding me and now you’re telling me you’re going to move out, and you want me to go with you? I’m kind of getting mixed messages here.”

“Well. I just needed some time to think.”

“Since when does thinking involve being a grade-A asshole to me?” You demand.

He shifts on the bed, seeming uncomfortable. “Eight. You wouldn’t leave me alone—”

“You know we live in the same house, right?” You interject.

“—and I needed time to work out,” He clears his throat, “how to put my feelings aside.”

“Wha— why do you need to?”

“You know why.”

“Five!” You stride over, standing directly in front of him, fists clenched at your side. “I told you I feel the same way. Why can’t you accept that?”

“Because you have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m not just—this isn’t some kind of temporary crush I’m just going to get over once you’ve had your fun.”

“Once I’ve—?! Oh, fuck off, Five. I saw your feelings. I _felt_ them. I know this isn’t a game.”

He stays silent, but looks up and meets your eyes. His expression is impassive as you’ve ever seen it.

When it becomes obvious he’s not going to respond, you clench your jaw in frustration. “Fine! You don’t believe me,” You glower, incensed. “So you’re just going to avoid me? For how long?”

“Eight, be reasonable,” He says, his cool and collected demeanor enraging you further, reminding you of your father. “I haven’t been avoiding you. I was just trying to get some space.”

“You haven’t been _talking_ to me,” Your voice cracks, overwhelmed by the past week, and you have to swallow back tears. _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ “You were treating me like– like _Luther_. There’s nobody else I can– I– don’t you even care?”

Five’s impassive expression finally cracks, the corners of his eyes tightening. “You know I do.”

You laugh wetly, “So why aren’t you acting like it?”

He loses his cool at your teary question, “I– Shit, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.”

“What?” You ask, thrown off by this.

“Just– nevermind. We can’t do this, alright?”

“But we feel the same way.”

“It would end badly,” He says, firm. “It’s just– not happening.”

You sit down on the bed beside him with a sigh, tea long-since abandoned on the cluttered desk across the room. There has to be some way to get through to him, to make him understand.

“You don’t believe me.”

Five shrugs non-committally, leaning away from you. “It’s all moot, anyway. Just forget it ever happened, and everything can go back to normal. I’ll stop being weird, alright, I know I was. Now let me tell you about my idea for when we move out.”

You can feel the window of opportunity rapidly closing. The rejection sits heavy in your stomach, queasy as if you’d eaten rancid meat. Before you know it, your hand shoots out to grab Five’s arm, determined to stop him from changing the subject, from distancing himself, from leaving you. “Wait.”

He pauses, the sharp edge of annoyance leaking into his voice. “What now?”

“Let me try something. Please.” You have an idea. It’s a risky idea — you have no clue how to do it, or if it can be done. But it might be the only thing that can get through to Five, the stubborn bastard to outlast all stubborn bastards.

Five is instantly wary. “…Try what?”

“Just trust me?” You say, though it comes out as a question.

Five gives a look like ‘ _are you really pulling the trust me card?’_ , but he relents. “…Alright.”

“Okay. Uh, close your eyes.”

“Seriously?”

“Please,” You reply. “I can’t do this with you staring at me.”

He heaves an exaggerated sigh, but his eyes slide closed. Slowly, you shift toward him, bringing your hands up to hover around his temples.

“I’m going to try to let you read my mind,” You say, voice butterfly-wing soft, “stay still.”

To his credit, Five doesn’t visibly react. His eyes stay closed as he says, “Are you sure this is safe?”

“No,” You reply, and seeing his mouth pull into its stubborn slant, add, “but I’m not worried. I can go at my own pace.”

“…do you really want to do this?” His eyes open slightly, just slits. You whap him on the nose in rebuke.

“Close them!” Then, in response, “It’s only fair. I saw your thoughts, and they were ones you didn’t want me to see. Now stop asking so many questions and let me try this.”

“Fine,” He mutters.

Taking a slow, deep breath, you try to clear your mind. It’s difficult — there are so many thoughts buzzing through your head, it feels like a beehive. This is damn _nerve-wracking,_ for more reasons than one. First of all, you’ve never tried this before. You have no idea if it’ll work, how it’ll work, or if it might hurt you like those first attempts after mirroring The Horror. Second, having someone seeing your thoughts is… intimate. Having that person be Five, who you’re close to, whose opinion you care about, who you don’t necessarily want seeing all you feel for him laid bare. Well, that’s downright scary.

You can’t help but think you’ll spend the entire time trying not to think of things, which of course just makes you think of those things.

But this is important, dammit. Five needs to know how you feel about him. You can’t lose him to something like this, and it’s only fair after what you unintentionally saw.

So you let the thoughts pass you by, running through your head until they slip away— acknowledging the fear, the apprehension, the adoration, and letting it all go. Then you focus, your tendrils reaching out, finding Five’s mind. Usually you’d search, finding space to slip past the barriers and into Five’s thoughts, but this time you try to draw his mind towards yours.

It’s difficult to pull; even once you’ve gotten a good grip on his mind, you can’t move it around. He doesn’t have the ability to reach out the way you do. You spend some time searching around the edges of his barrier, looking for tendrils like you have. If he has them, maybe you could guide them, grabbing them like a child’s hand.

Five is silent the entire time. You’re dimly aware of his quiet breathing in the background.

You don’t find anything like your tendrils attached to Five’s mind, but you knew going in that this wouldn’t be straightforward. Time to take another approach.

This time, you try wrapping your mind around his own, spreading like a cloud over his. It seeps in without any probing, without any penetrating of his barrier, sitting just inside his awareness. He gasps softly.

“Shit, I think it’s working.”

 _Can you hear me?_ You think, testing the waters.

“Yeah, I hear you,” He replies, sounding awed. You can tell he’s trying to hide it behind a façade of impassiveness.

“Uh, that’s what _you_ think,” He says, replying to your thought.

“Oh, god, this is weird,” You say, acutely aware that nothing is private right now.

“Yeah. Now you know what it’s like for others when you’re mirroring them.”

Guilt creeps into your thoughts at that, experiencing first-hand what it must have been like for Five when you had—

“Stop,” He interrupts you, “Stop it, I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty.”

You clear your throat, finding it awkward having your every thought broadcast like this. Five’s eyes are open now, watching you with open curiosity. The two of you sit cross-legged on his bed, knees touching, Five leaning back on his arms as he considers you. You’re carefully trying not to think of anything incriminating.

“This is… oddly intense,” He comments. “It’s hard paying attention to your thoughts and mine at the same time. And I didn’t expect to feel the things you’re feeling.”

“Yeah,” You tell him, “you get used to it eventually. You just gotta pick a stream of thought to focus on.”

It’s surprisingly easy to keep the connection between you going. Usually it’s a conscious effort to mirror someone’s mind. It takes focus to keep your grasp on them, not to mention staying tuned in to their stream of thought. This time it’s different— natural as breathing, Five’s mind welcoming. It’s almost like when you fell deep into his thoughts, expecting much more resistance than you found.

“It might be because we’re close,” Five says, and you’re inclined to agree. Unspoken behind _close_ goes the fact that you’re in love with ea- _crap, crap, stop thinking, no, he can hear this_.

“Wasn’t this why you wanted to do this in the first place?” Five mumbles, and you have to glance at him then, because Five never mumbles.

He’s flushed a pleasant pink, looking away from you. This reaction bolsters your courage; you _do_ love flustering Five. (He shoots you an unimpressed look at this, eyes narrowed).

“You’re right, Five,” You say, pushing the nervousness back, trying to exude sass. “I was going to prove my point. I will be, uh, needing your help, though.”

He’s looking at you now, eyebrows raised. “…Okay? What exactly do you want me to– oh.”

He cuts himself off as your thoughts give you away, face burning. Five says nothing, leaning back on his arms across from you, an unreadable expression on his face. The anticipation is killing you, nerves mingled with embarrassment at your request, but most of all remembering the night before when you had _finally, finally_ gotten to press your lips to his, how soft and warm he’d been, how it had sent a bolt of electricity through you.

Five still doesn’t move. You shift uncomfortably on the spot.

“You really want this, huh?” He says, still with that unreadable expression.

You laugh lightly. “Yeah. Thought I made that clear already.”

“It’s different hearing it like this.”

“Yeah, I know,” You respond. “Thoughts don’t hold anything back. S-so? Can I kiss you?”

“No,” He says, and then before you can panic, “let me this time.”

It’s still a few seconds before he leans towards you, slow, almost cautious. The press of his lips to yours is soft, barely there, just the hint of a kiss. One of his hands comes up to rest on your arm, the other still sitting in his lap.

Even just this is enough to make you take a sharp breath through your nose. This close, you can feel the warmth radiating off of him. You’re acutely aware of every point of contact between the two of you, the barest weight of his hand on your arm like a beacon, your knees pressed into one another’s. His breath ghosts across your cheek, and this close you’re breathing nothing but the smell of him. He smells delicious.

Five pulls back, licking his lips. “Whoa,” He says, maybe the least articulate thing you’ve ever heard him say.

He laughs. “Give me a break. I didn’t expect your thoughts to be so…”

And before you can worry about the end of that sentence, he leans forwards and kisses you again. It’s still soft, just the press of lips against lips, but firmer now. This time you surge back into him, lips parting slightly against his own, and pour every bit of adoration you feel for him into the touch. The way your heart skips a beat when his hand brushes yours, the wit and playfulness that mingle in his tone, his frank words when you need to hear them, telling you how it is, but always giving you hope. Nights when he’s listened to your anger, your fears, your sadness, and the quiet after a hard mission, battered and drained and leaning tiredly into the arm slung around your shoulders, hand ruffling your hair.

Rarer, the times he’s opened up to you, been vulnerable, trusted you in a way you know is reserved for only you, and how connected you feel to him, how softly you trust in him, warm and sturdy and always on your side in a way nobody else in your life has ever been.

When he pulls away, you see a vulnerability so earnest it’s almost child-like; Five’s eyes are wide, soft, brows framing the wonder in them, lips slightly parted. He swallows before he says, “You love me?”

It takes all your willpower not to throw your hands up in exasperation. “Like I told you. Multiple times.”

“I know, but… it’s different, experiencing it.”

You know that. Hearing someone’s thoughts and hearing someone’s words are completely different things. It’s not that people lie, though of course sometimes they do, but that there’s a whole world of context missing from what they say. The feelings behind it, the thoughts, often not even conscious ones. The small lies of omission driven by fear, even if they don’t know why it makes them scared to say. The way Luther will never admit Diego is right about anything, because if he’s wrong about everything, he can’t be right about dad.

The fear that you’re saying the same words, but meaning different things.

How does someone else’s happy compare to yours? A normal kid’s laughter, walking with their friends to school? A regular life?

And what about their sadness— is it anything like the bottomless, sucking pit of it that festers in your house? The pain that you all face, physical, mental, in varying degrees?

But.

You can’t forget the excitement, either. Some of the missions you go on are scary, yeah. Sometimes you see things you’re pretty sure nobody should see. But that adrenaline rush— that sense of accomplishment— working as part of a team, feeling so close to your family— nothing else matches that.

When Five tells you to consider moving out, leaving all of this behind, you wonder if his leaving is the same as your leaving. Would you leave together? Did he really want you by his side, or would that change?

Five’s hands come up to squeeze your shoulders. “Eight, look at me.”

Slowly, you meet his eyes.

“I would never leave without you,” He says, voice firm. “We’re in this together.”

You swallow down the heavy discomfort of uncertainty, telling him, “You better not, Five Hargreeves. I give a mean knuckle sandwich.”

He laughs, kissing you on the mouth. “Trust me, I know.”

But something is holding him back. You can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the turn of his face.

“Five, why did you fight me so hard on this?” You ask, still unsure.

His mouth twists in a bitter motion. “It’s… a lot of reasons.” He looks back at you. “You were right, I didn’t believe you felt the same way. But I also hoped you didn’t.“

Your face scrunches, hurt and confused. “I don’t understand. Why would you hope for that?“

He winces, looking guilty. “Sorry. Eight, can you honestly say I’d be a good partner?”

You blink back at him, caught off guard by the apology and the question both. “Yes, I think so.”

“I’m not exactly nice. Our siblings call me a jerk all the time, and they’re right. And I’m not good at, you know, this emotions crap.”

“Neither am I,” You say.

“Better than me,” He counters. “Look, I’m not insecure. I’m damn good at what I do, and I’m smarter than most people. I just know enough to admit the things I’m bad at, too. I can’t do normal.“

You snort. “I don’t want normal, Five. We have superpowers! There’s no way I was ever going to have a normal life, and I already told you I don’t want to. Plus, I would rather honest than nice.“

“Okay,” Five considers you carefully. “And what if this doesn’t work out? It’d make family reunions all kinds of awkward.“

“Family reunions are already going to be awkward. We’re doomed either way, right? It’s gonna be awkward if you reject me now, and it’s gonna be awkward if we’re together, and it’d be awkward if later on we broke up. So… take your pick.”

“I suppose you might have a point,” Five says. “I’m sure Luther and Allison mooning after each other will be enough to distract everyone, anyway.”

“Wait– Luther and Allison?”

Five laughs. “You really are dense sometimes, Eight.”

“Okay, rude! Luther and Allison like each other?”

“Everyone knows. Except you, I guess. Apparently our family’s too messed up to have just one pseudo-incestuous couple.”

Your face scrunches up. “Please never refer to us that way again.”

Five grins, “If we’re really doing this, Eight, you should at least face the truth.”

You shove him lightly, saying, “So you’re not rejecting me? We’re really okay this time?“

“How could I, when you love me so much?” He says, smugness returning.

“Yes, ha, ha, very funny. But really?” You ask, voice fragile.

Five’s face softens. “We’re okay. Better than okay. I just… I still don’t really get it.“

“What’s there to get?”

“I’m not,” He shrugs, “I really don’t think I’ll be good at this kind of thing. Do you really not think I’m an asshole? You called me one ten minutes ago.“

“In my defense, you have been acting like one. But…” You pause, searching for a tactful way to word this before realizing Five would see the truth anyway. “Alright, yes, sometimes you can be rude, and sometimes you can be arrogant. But that’s all… you. To be honest, I kind of like it.“ Your face warms. “Obviously not recently, that was different. But usually… I don’t know, Five! It’s just part of you, and you’re the only partner I want, I don’t want to be with anyone else. I–I love you.“

When you finally look up, Five is staring at you with such earnest adoration, you immediately look away. You’ve never told someone you love them before, not like this. It makes you want to hide your face.

“Eight,” Five says. You try to look back at him, only to be met with a face full of shoulder as his arms wrap around you in a crushing hug. “I’m sorry I acted that way. I won’t do it again.”

Two apologies in one night? Five must be setting a new record.

“Good,” you say into his shoulder. “Nothing but being nice to me from now on, okay?“

“We already went over this…”

“Nothing but being only moderately snarky to me.”

“That I can do,” He grins, pulling back to kiss you. “How about—” He kisses you again, “—I start with this.“ And again. Small pecks, one after the other, each one bursting inside you brighter than the last, until your mind is blank and fuzzy with it.

You don’t think you’ll ever get tired of kissing him.


	6. Resolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely smut. If that's not something you want to read, you can skip to the epilogue! You won't miss any plot.

By the time Five stops kissing you, you’re almost dizzy. He’s looking back at you with a self-satisfied cat-that-caught-the-mouse smirk. It’s a few moments of recovering before you realise you’re leaning back, Five’s enthusiasm too much to keep your ground. He has both hands on you now, the other resting sweetly on your cheek. He looks conflicted.

You wish you knew what he was thinking. You don’t, so you pull him to you instead, not nearly finished kissing him. He complies easily, leaning in toward you again— but this time when your lips meet, you lean back further, pulling him with you. When he breaks the kiss, you’re lying down, one elbow propping you up as he leans over you.

Five swallows, hard.

“Are you sure about this, Eight?” He asks, that careful, searching look on his face again.

You groan, not ready to start with this again. “What part of this makes you think I’m not sure?”

“Just,” He starts, then closes his mouth. Which you’re staring at. It’s hard not to imagine kissing him now you’ve had a taste. You want more than small pecks, lips slanting against each other. You want- you cut the thought off, embarrassed. Every time you get distracted, you forget Five can hear everything.

He kisses you longer, then. One of your hands comes up to wind into his hair, pulling him closer. It’s feather-soft between your fingers. He pulls back slightly, but before you can be disappointed he tilts his head, readjusting, and his lips part against yours. When you feel the warm wetness of his tongue, you can’t help but sigh into his mouth. A bolt of arousal shoots through you, coiling warm below your stomach, and it takes everything in you not to squirm underneath him. You almost whine when he pulls away.

“Fiiiiive,” You whine, at the same moment Five says,

“You– you want me?”

Your eyes widen up at him, cheeks burning so intensely you feel the flush of it spread to your neck. Wasn’t it obvious?

Five blinks back at you. “No. I wasn’t sure you would.”

Wait, was he weirded out by this? Did he not want you that way?

“Oh,” He replies, eyes lidded, “that is very much not a problem.”

Is it possible to blush any harder? You’re all kinds of warm and squirmy inside, wanting so many things at once— wanting to arch up into him, to feel his tongue against yours, wanting him to press himself against you and grind into you.

“Was that something you worried about?” You ask quickly, trying to divert from your thoughts.

“I didn’t know if it was something you’d want,” He says, and he’s so relaxed now, all the tension bleeding out of him.

“Turns out there’s a lot you don’t know,” You say.

His weight on top of you is so warm and solid, it makes the heat pooling low inside you build.

“Mm,” He replies, a lazy smirk on his face, “you’re changing the subject.”

“No, I’m not,” You lie, even though he can see you’re lying.

“Liars don’t get kissed.”

You grit your teeth. “Five.”

“Yes?”

“Five, come on.”

“You’ll have to be more specific, Eightie.”

You squirm underneath him, more embarrassed than you’ve ever been, but _wanting_.

“Okay,” You relent, a note of pleading creeping into your voice, “You’re right, I was changing the subject! Now will you please kiss me, I really want to make out with you and I’m super turned on.”

The desire in his expression is enough to make you squirm again. You only see it for a brief second before his head tilts and his mouth is crashing against yours, tongue licking into your mouth. You gasp against him, not expecting the intensity of the kiss, and his tongue slips against yours. It’s better than you ever imagined it would be— soft, warm, and slick, his lips sliding almost closed against yours then parting again.

Your fingers curl into the fabric of Five’s blazer, gripping onto him. The world shrinks, cocooning until there’s nothing but the space the two of you occupy; the ghost of his breath against your cheek, the weight of his legs tangled with yours, the press of his hands against your arm and neck.

You need more. More of his weight pressing against you, more of his warmth. You move to pull Five down, but find he’s already pressing more of himself against you, likely responding to your thought.

Remembering that he can still hear _everything_ almost takes you out of the moment. You break the kiss, saying, “Ah, Five–” before you cut yourself off with a sharp breath. He’s hard. You can feel him pressing into you, lined up just so. The friction is delicious, and you immediately want more of it.

Five stares down at you, eyes lidded. “Hmm?”

“You– ah, maybe I should stop the, uh,” Your sentence breaks off as Five grinds into you, “a–ah, uh, oh god.”

“Stop the…?” He prompts, clearly enjoying himself. He doesn’t stop grinding into you, slowly but firmly.

“God– goddammit, Five, c’mon,” You grumble, breathy voice giving your true feelings away, “you can read my- ah, my mind, right now, you _know_.”

He laughs, and you’re mollified by the breathiness of it, “Leave it. I like it. You can always turn it off if you really–”

He cuts himself off when you lift your hips, grinding yourself up against him. He doesn’t make a sound, but he does say, “Fuck, Eight,” eyes sliding closed as he kisses you again.

Your hands trail down his back, wanting to touch him, running down to his lower back then trailing up again. Five’s leaning on his elbows now, the entire length of his body pressing against your own. He’s against every inch of you, closer than you’ve ever been to him, to anyone. It makes you want to feel more of his skin against your own.

Five takes a deep breath as he pulls away, eyes still closed. He lets it out slowly, a hand coming up to your cheek, cupping your face. His eyes flutter open as he says,

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this. I never really thought I’d get to kiss you, or touch you.” His hands press firmly against your skin as he speaks, running down your arm, over your ribs, your hip, your thigh. They don’t stop; slow and steady, he keeps touching you like he can’t get enough of it.

“Yeah,” He murmurs, head pressing into your shoulder, responding to your thought, “you could say that.”

And then he presses his lips against your neck, kissing his way down to your collarbone. Instinctively you curve up toward him, presenting him with more skin, making yourself completely vulnerable.

His kisses are wet against your skin, the barest hint of tongue on your neck. He stops halfway down to undo the first few buttons of your shirt, and you instantly miss the steady warmth of his hands touching you everywhere he can reach. Almost everywhere.

His mouth meets your collarbone with the barest scrape of teeth. Your shirt is unbuttoned halfway now, white bra peeking through. Before Five can unbutton it completely, you stop him, gently grabbing his wrist.

His razor-sharp eyes dart up to meet yours, alert. “What is it? You want to stop?”

“No,” You reply, stopping the last thing on your mind right now. Nothing short of a mission could pull you away, and possibly not even that. “Take your shirt off too.”

While Five does that, you occupy yourself with undoing the rest of your buttons. You go through the motion slowly, shrugging off your shirt and undoing your bra as well. Truth be told, you’re pretty nervous. You’ve never done something like this before, only read about it in books.

You glance up, but Five is busy undoing the last of his buttons and doesn’t give any sign he’s noticed your nerves. Though of course he has. He’ll be feeling it too, yours if he doesn’t have any of his own. You kind of hope he does. He’s a cocky bastard on the surface, but this is less nerve-wracking if you know he’s nervous too.

Half-undressed, you lean back on your elbows and watch Five pull his shirt off, admiring the stretch of skin over his hips.

He looks back up at you as he says, “You know, I-” He stumbles over his words, “-oh, wow.”

You clear your throat uncomfortably when he just stops and stares at you.

“Uh, earth to Five?”

“You’re stunning,” He says, and your cheeks burn. “Can I touch you?”

“Go ahead.”

He moves back toward you, fingers trailing up the curve of your stomach. When he reaches your chest, his hands cup your breasts, giving them an experimental squeeze.

“They’re so soft,” He says, running a thumb over one of your hard nipples. The soft, dry warmth of his palms against your skin makes you hungry for more. You want to make him feel good, to show him how he makes you feel.

You trail your hands down his back again, running your fingertips over the bumps of his spine until you reach his pants. Then you slide your hands around to the waistband of them, just below his stomach. He flinches slightly and makes a small noise, clearly not expecting it.

You wait a moment to see if he’ll pull away, and when he doesn’t, slip just the tips of your fingers under the waist of his pants. You run them along the waistband, trailing against his lower stomach until you reach the button. It’s barely a second of fumbling to get it open and pull his fly down.

Above you, Five’s barely breathing, like he’s holding his breath waiting to see what you’ll do. For a moment, you hesitate, worried you’re going to do something wrong. But you’ve faced situations with far greater stakes than this, under far more pressure, with people who couldn’t have cared less if they’d seen you killed.

Five was the complete opposite of that. He was someone who loved you— and someone you loved. That thought is all you need to take the plunge, sliding your hand over the hard bulge in his underwear. Five groans above you, curling himself toward you. His head tilts down, face pressed against your shoulder and hands grasping your upper arms.

You squeeze, feeling the shape of his cock through the fabric. It twitches under your hand, and when you peek down, curious, you see a small wet patch forming. You swipe your finger over it, drawing a small sigh out of Five. In this position, you can hear even the tiniest catch of his breath, and you find yourself _really_ liking it.

Curiosity doesn’t let you linger long. You snake your fingers under the elastic of his underwear, wrapping your hand around him.

It’s warm. It’s- way warmer than you expected, and the skin is soft. You pull Five’s cock out of his underwear, wanting a better look. He looks— and sounds— like he’s ready to burst, breath hitching and catching in your ear, body still curled against your own. The head of his cock is wet, leaking— not cum— you remember this has a particular name.

“Pre-cum,” Five says into your ear, voice low.

Keeping your grip loose, you slide your hand up experimentally. The skin on Five’s shaft glides smoothly with the movement, rolling over the head of his cock. You pump your hand a few more times, noticing that you feel the bump of the head as your fingers cover it on the upstroke.

Five’s breathing becomes stuttered in your ear, breaths shuddering out with each stroke of your hand. He starts talking,

“Fuuuck, Eight. That feels so good. D-do it a bit more firmly – yeah, that’s, fuck. That’s good. _Really_ good, keep going.”

You do, jerking him off with steady strokes, hand squeezing around him. It’s barely any time at all before his body tenses, hands gripping your arms like a vice.

“Shit, ah, Eight. God, if you keep this up, I’m gonna cum. Maybe— we should stop—”

Your hand speeds up in response, and his muscles grow shaky around you as he gets close.

“Do it.” You say, “Cum for me, Five.”

The tension releases like a coiled spring. Five thrusts into your hand, groaning as hot, wet spurts of cum cover your stomach. He thrusts once, twice, three times. Then he relaxes all at once, flopping against your side as if he’s made of jelly, breathing heavily.

Curious, you run your fingers through the lines of cum all over you. It’s thick, sticking to your fingertips, and still warm though it’s started to cool. You bring your wet fingers up to your mouth, eyeing it. Five’s eyes slit open just in time to see your tongue flick out to taste it.

“Ssssshit,” He says, voice hazy. “That’s hot.”

Honestly, it tastes kind of weird. It’s slightly salty, slightly bitter, and not much else. But Five’s reaction is enough encouragement to suck the rest of it off your fingers, pulling them out of your mouth with a wet _pop_.

He groans, still boneless against you, and says. “If you keep that up, I’ll get hard again.”

“That’s the plan,” You grin back at him, trailing your hands down his stomach.

“Wait,” he says, moving away. You pause, watching him quizzically. “Let me clean you up.”

He blinks away, returning with a damp washcloth and using it to wipe the cooling pools of cum off your stomach.

“Kinda risky teleporting into the bathroom in the middle of the night,” You say.

His mouth turns up at the corner. “Yeah, well, I got lucky. God forbid I see Diego posing in the mirror again.”

You laugh. “In the middle of the night?”

“Yep. I think he was trying not to get caught.”

He shucks off his pants on the way back to the bed. By the time Five’s done cleaning you up, he seems to have regained most of his energy back. And most of his boner.

“Now, where were we…”

He doesn’t tease like you did; maybe he feels how desperately you want him to touch you. Five sinks down on the bed next to you, undoing and pulling down your pants. You’re worried you’ve soaked a wet patch through your underwear, but if you have, Five doesn’t take the time to notice, fingers sliding under the waistband.

You swallow loudly as his fingers slide between your folds, taking a sharp breath when he brushes over your clit. But Five doesn’t stop there, sliding down until he finds your entrance and sinking a finger into you.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” He marvels. “It went in so easily.”

He buries his finger to the knuckle, sliding it back out again. It’s so different to anything you’ve known touching yourself, feeling every inch of Five’s finger enter you. It’s strange and good, and all you can think about is wanting more.

Five leans down, kissing the hollow of your throat as he pushes a second finger into you. You let out a noise halfway between a sigh and a gasp, feeling some of the fullness you’ve been craving. There’s a slight stretch to it, but it’s _good_ , and you adjust quickly.

“God, this is– this is actually making it pretty hard to concentrate,” He says, watching your face.

“Huh?” You ask, brain too fuzzy to comprehend what he means.

“The mind-reading.”

“Oh.” You pull your feelers back, your mind peeling away from Five’s.

“Mm, much better. You’ll have to tell me when you want more, though.”

“Now, please,” You respond instantly, grinding up into his hand.

Five laughs, surprised. His eyes are bright with arousal when he says, “Already? Someone’s eager.”

“Yyyyes,” You say, unabashed, “come here?”

Five’s fingers slide out of you as he moves up, cock sliding against your bare stomach.

“You want me to fuck you, Eight?” He asks, voice low, gazing down at you.

“Yeah,” You say, a wave of arousal washing over you at his words. He kisses you in response, slow and lazy. Then he’s grinding into you again, except this time there’s nothing between you. His hardness slides between your folds, rubbing your clit with each movement he makes.

Just when you’re ready to tell him to stop teasing you, he lines himself up. Feeling his head pressing against your entrance, it takes all your willpower not to push up into him. You’re nervous, sure. Worried it might hurt. But the thought of having him inside you— it sends a full-body shiver of anticipation through you.

You squirm underneath him when he doesn’t move.

“C’mon, Five.”

He licks his dry lips. “Tell me what you want.”

It’s embarrassing, saying these things out loud. But he’s so _close_ to filling you and whatever, alright, he wants to hear it, then fine, you push down the embarrassment and tell him, “I–I want you inside me.”

He pushes, and you feel the tip of his cock sink into you. You sigh breathily into his skin as he opens you up with slow, shallow thrusts, easing slowly into you. His hand slides up to meet yours, fingers curling between your own. With each small thrust the arousal inside you spools into a building tension, each stroke making it wind tighter.

“Fuck, you feel _so_ good,” Five breathes raggedly, finally burying himself completely inside you.

“Nnh– it’s so deep.”

“Too much?” He asks.

“No– no, it’s… more?” You ask, a pleading note creeping into your voice.

He presses a long kiss against your neck as he pulls out of you slowly, saying, “Yeah? You want more?”

Before you can answer, he thrusts back inside you, hitting a spot that short-circuits your brain. You gasp, the hand on his shoulder gripping until the pads of your fingers are pressing shallow indents into his skin. When he snaps his hips into you again, you try to stifle your sharp intake of breath, embarrassed. Five doesn’t fail to notice.

“You like it that much?” He asks, voice laced with smugness. “I haven’t even really started fucking you yet.”

“So fuck me then,” You respond with snark, hands sliding down to pull his hips into you. Five’s eyes turn sharp and heated as he complies with the motion. He thrusts into you, skin slapping against yours with each thrust. It hits that overwhelming spot inside you over and over again, warmth pooling in your groin as the tension builds.

Five seems just as affected, curling his body in toward you as he fucks you, breaths growing shaky. He kisses your neck again, but it’s sloppy, unfocused. It takes all your self-restraint to stop yourself from letting out soft noises each time he pushes into you. You barely notice him reaching down between you until he’s touching your clit, rubbing small circles against it. The contact sends an unexpected jolt through you, making you let out a moan.

“Shh,” Five says, hand coming up to cover your mouth. But his eyes flash with arousal, and his hand drops to touch you again, winding that tension inside you tighter and tighter, all of your muscles tensing until you think you’ll burst.

You’re so close to the edge; you can feel the flood of warmth building inside you, ready to tip you over it. Finally, when you don’t think you can take any more, it bursts inside you, filling your veins with the overwhelming heat as you clench around Five’s cock.

“Yeah, that’s it, cum for me, my girl,” Five growls into your ear, fucking you through your orgasm. And _fuck_ , you don’t expect the elation that spikes through you when he calls you that. You moan loudly, barely managing to muffle it with your palm.

The tension bleeds out of you all at once, tendons turning to jelly. Five eases up, slowing down when you slump into the bed. It’s only few seconds before he thrusts into you again, though mercifully he stops touching your clit.

“Ah– F–ffffuck,” You groan, the feeling too much in the best possible way.

“Can you give me one more, Eight?” Five asks, voice husky in your ear. “Be good and cum for me again?”

“Yes,” You babble, too overwhelmed to have any kind of filter, “I’m– God, it feels so good, I’m gonna cum for you, Five.”

You clench around Five again, hard, orgasm hitting you with more intensity than the last. This time, when you finally slump, limbs boneless and head full of fuzzy contentment, Five pulls out of you, jerking himself off with quick strokes. It’s a matter of seconds before he’s spilling onto your stomach, thrusting into his hand as he cums letting out low noises.

Then he flops against your side, melting into you like liquid. His skin is hot against your own, and you’re both breathing heavily. The pleasant fuzzy warmth of afterglow settles into you, and you close your eyes, enjoying the sensation. You’re not sure how long the two of you lie there, but eventually you recover enough to sit up, grabbing your shirt from beside the bed to wipe your stomach.

It goes straight back on the floor after, thrown over your shoulder as you wrap your arms around Five, sighing happily.

“Oh, Five, that was so gooood,” You tell him, nuzzling into his neck.

You hear the slow, lazy smirk in Fives voice as he replies, “I know.” Then, with less arrogance, “I wanted it for so long. I’ve thought about it… a lot.”

“Me, too.” You pause, hesitating before you add, “Getting off to the thought of me, huh?”

“Like you haven’t.”

Well. He’s got you there. “Touché.”

Five slings an arm across your shoulders. There’s a long silence as you bask in the afterglow, your breaths evening out. Exhaustion follows in its wake, your thoughts quieting for the first time all week. It’s nice.


	7. Epilogue

Your eyelids feel heavy, and you struggle to keep them open. It’s tempting to sleep despite the fact you can’t be caught in Five’s bed; you’re just so warm and comfortable, completely relaxed. But there’s still one thing left on your mind.

“So,” You say, voice muzzled with sleepiness, “what’s this idea for when we move out?”

“Mm?” Five replies, sounding half-asleep himself. “Oh, that. They call themselves The Commission, and they preserve the timeline.”

“They _what?_ ” You ask, sitting up to stare at Five with wide eyes, suddenly wide awake.

“You know,” He says, “they keep the time continuum safe, make sure everything’s going how it should.”

“The _what?!_ ”

“They can time travel. From what I’ve been told, they use it to stop the timeline of events from deviating. And to stop any time paradoxes, if it comes to that.”

You’re silent for a moment, struggling to process this. “They… time travel is possible?”

“Yep.”

“How the hell do you know this?!” You demand.

“Well…” Five says, “I might have been experimenting with time travel.”

“You _what?!_ ”

“Just small things, at first. A few seconds forward… a few seconds back. It’s incredibly difficult. Space jumps are nothing compared to time travel.”

“Five, dad told you time travel was dangerous!”

“Why do you still listen to the old man after everything he’s done?”

“No, it’s not– I mean– he makes us do dangerous stuff all the time. So if he thinks something is too dangerous, it must be _dangerous_.”

“Actually…” He replies, “I think he was more worried about the timeline than me. See, that’s why The Commission contacted me. They thought I’d derail the timeline. They told me if I did, I’d damage the space-time continuum. And, Eight, if we worked for The Commission, I could learn to use time-travel properly. Right now, I can only do a few seconds at the most. I’ve tried more, but it doesn’t work, or it… well, nevermind, it just doesn’t work.”

Your brow crinkles, unsure what to think of all of this. “We could really work for them? They want me, too?”

His eyes grow bright with manic excitement as he says, “Yeah! I told you we have valuable skills. At The Commission, we’d do missions together. They’d pay us, like a regular job. They provide all our accommodation, and we’d get to visit all sorts of time and places. And… I could study time travel.”

“They would help you with your powers? The time travel?”

“Well,” He hesitates, “they don’t want me to use it. They have a different way to travel, a more reliable way, only used for missions. But they _have_ a way. They’ve cracked it; I’ve been trying to do that for years! Can you imagine? Once I have a solid grasp on how they do it, we could go anywhere, do anything.”

It sounds unreal. Sure, your existence itself is unreal. Your life isn’t normal, but this? It sounds too good to be true, better than any future you could have imagined for yourself. Instead of saving a few people here and there, you could help save time itself.

A thought occurs to you.

“Five, how long have you been time travelling?”

Five looks stoic, which in your experience means he’s uncomfortable. “A while,” He replies vaguely.

“You said you’ve been trying for years,” You deadpan.

“Alright, yes,” He admits. “I’ve been trying ever since I asked dad about it. But I’ve only done it recently. I stopped trying for a while after you… after I got distracted.”

“Oh,” You say, voice small. “Why did that stop you?”

“I,” Five hesitates again. “Okay, don’t freak out. This was before I had any idea what I was doing, but… I was worried something would go wrong. I didn’t want to leave you to go through that alone.”

It’s tempting to tell him off. You want to demand the details, to know how safe it is, to make sure doing this doesn’t put him in danger, but… he let you experiment with your power on your own terms. You won’t deny him the same.

There is one thing you need to ask.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Five shrugs like it’s obvious. “You had enough on your plate already, and I hadn’t learnt enough yet. I didn’t know how it worked, I didn’t have the answers. I wanted to know what I was talking about when I told you.”

You sigh, tempted to roll your eyes at him. How very like him to pretend he has all the answers. You have to admit it’s effective— it really feels like Five has all the answers sometimes.

Like now, with the Commission. What were the chances he’d find the one place two famous superheros like you would fit in?

“Okay,” You say, “I have a lot of questions.”

“I expected you would.”

“How did you find out about the Commission? You said someone ‘told’ you this, so you met someone from it? When did this happen? What would we be doing on our missions, would they be very different to the ones we do now? Where the heck do time-travelling agents work from? And what would we tell the others?”

Five’s brows raise higher with each question you ask. “Chill out for a minute, will you? One question at a time.”

You close your mouth, staring at him expectantly.

“I’ll answer all your questions and then some. But I need to tell you, I’m not just doing this for a job. I have a plan.”

Your eyes grow bright with anticipation, hungry to hear more about this shiny new future that had suddenly opened up for you like a lighthouse rising out of the dark uncertainty.

“The Commission keeps the timeline from diverting,” He tells you, “but that means there’s someone there deciding how time should go. Imagine if we knew what was going to happen. We could keep our family safe. We could keep the world safe.”

“But,” You say, eyes squinting in confusion, “I thought the point was to stop the timeline from changing?”

“Not if we’re the ones deciding how the timeline should go,” He says, teeth showing in a determined grin. “We’re going to make a name for ourselves there. We’ll climb the ranks of the Commission, and together we’ll control time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this fic, and I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Thankyou so much to everyone who left such sweet comments, I love reading them and I'm so glad people have been enjoying my writing <3 Seeing people leaving kudos and comments makes my day!
> 
> This leaves off pretty open-ended, and I have plans to write a part two. It probably won't appear for a few months because I like to have things mostly written before I post them, but I'm excited to get started on it :) It'll be more plot-heavy than this, and likely longer. We'll see how I go, though. This is the longest thing I've written and first I've posted in a long time.


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